Fire Escape Cast #105

Folks at home.

As you can tell, this is not the voice of one Michael James Maharty.

No, this is Dan Reichert.

Mike Maharty, based on his most recent Instagram story, is looking at maps of the Champagne region of France. I'm not kidding. That is his most recent Instagram story is he got new books about the Champagne region of France and he.

Is pouring over the maps.

Mary is working, she's a professional, she's doing a traveling for work right now. But I've lost my co host here. I've lost my good friends Mike and Mary. But you know what they say, when you lose your co host on a podcast, You look to your blood. You look to the click, You look to the Blake Club. That's right, that we'll grub that was you're doing the nWo guitar.

That was actually a DX reference.

Yeah, we're gonna mix our metaphors here.

Mike, Mary aren't here. So my fifty percent wrestling rule is off the table. So it's rub bonanza. You don't don't stop it. They're all scrambling in their cars to hit stop on this.

They're just driving off of cliffs right now. Well, then that's the fascinating to WrestleMania.

Welcome.

This is the roadblock, brother, Okay, this is this is the one rest people get for me talking about wrestling. I will attempt to honor that on the vire Escape cast here despite it being literally WrestleMania week.

How could this is cruel and unusual? I would say, fellas, Yeah, hey, don't don't blame us. We're not gonna hold you do that. I don't care if you break your rule.

It's almost a part of me that's like, this is like really old, growing up Catholic stuff. And I'm like, they could just do WrestleMania on Eastern. Yeah, Like that's a loud out.

About being you know, many beautiful things about growing up Catholic. I think getting like ninety days off for Easter was good. A lot you got. You got your good Fridays, got your silly Saturdays, you got whatever Easter is.

They don't have Monday. Yeah.

Did you get a separate spring break?

Yeah? Yeah I think so. Yeah. Yeah. School sometimes days blended together. I don't know, there's all sorts of stuff. We just went to church one day a week.

Tuesday was my Mass day.

Yeah, yeah, I can't remember you just kind of sat there and like it was, you know, church was pretty good compared to class, so you kind of took that and stride.

It was tough for me because in class I would like doodle a lot. I got the office for doodling mortal combat fatalities and stuff like that, and I kid you not, what this is probably incredibly sacrilegious. What I did to pastime in mass was because I couldn't doodle and I just had severe add as a child. And I would just look around at all the stained glass and you would see like, oh, here's all the signs of the Cross. Here's this guy helping Jesus carry the cross.

Sam.

Sam?

Was that the guy's name who helped Jesus with the Christ? Was he the guy who wiped his face with the shroud of turn?

I think it was specifically, like who helped him with the cross? I'm sorry, crosscar Derek was the other guy.

Yeah.

So I would just look around at all because I always let stained glass looked cool as hell, and I was, and I would just picture all of them coming to life and jumping out and causing the scene, like if you've seen an End of Days, it's almost like this huge like fight inside of a church with like all of these Catholic and religious figures and stuff fighting it out, and basically it's his Mortal kmbat, Like this is the period of my life where everything was Mortal Kombat.

Right, yeah, Simon, by the way, it was Simon, not sam I was close.

There were uh who were the signs of the cross? He fell down, he needed help getting up, he had to have his face wiped.

Right, Well, where did it start? Did it literally start?

Like we won't talk about wrestling, everybody back to what really matters.

We got an email saying, hey, I listened to Firescape for games talk, not for political agendas, which confused me.

But let's get into religion.

This is what they really Let's rank the religions of the world. That's my favorite.

Oh yeah, honestly, And I said honestly instead of for shoot, I stopped myself.

Look at me. I disgusting.

No, Jesus like I went to Catholic school. I grew up here in Catholic school.

You went to school with Jesus?

No, I knows day eighties, nineteen eighties.

I don't like Jesus got arrested right or like put to death, but like I couldn't. I'm trying to think right now what he got like arrested for by the.

Well, the big thing was he went into so so they turned the church into a market, right that people are just saying something.

He flipped the tables.

Yeah, so hey flipped the tables and he freaked out and he got mad. So like there they're all real happy like him. Now, yes, yes, let's get the tables assignmon It's like, okay, now we actually got him for a for a real crime. I almost said she they got him for a crime, so they were real excited. That was still, you know, kind of bs and Jesus

I remember, during high school, I wrote when I was really getting into my student films and stuff that I was making, I wrote a short film called the Jesus Project, and it was about Jesus coming back and it was about just him reacting to I guess that was.

The name of Trump's political platform, I think, right, yes.

Jesus Project twenty five. Yeah, and it was about like, oh, him just reacting. It was like a comedy, but it was about him reacting to like, you know, it was like nineteen ninety nine probably when I with this, and but it was very you know, well, he gets like I think he gets addicted to heroin or something.

And yeah, it's like I remember my mom.

I was telling my mom about this, and despite the fact that I've never heard her talk about Jesus or church or anything religious whatsoever, she was very much just like, we don't believe that in this household, and like, I'm.

Very offended that you But I think it's because she was married to a guy at the time. It was very Catholic.

Yeah. Oddly enough, I also wrote my own thing about Jesus coming back in high school. It's called Jesus. It was called Jesus to the musical. Yeah, I don't remember much. One song went like It's a wonderful Morning for Jesus something like that. I still had that one.

All of the weird that you both share starts here it's all school.

Yeah, I went to Catholic school. There's not a lot of me and my keys. I don't know, man.

Sure, yeah, you guys definitely don't or stand out even from that crowd. But boy, something happened there.

Oh uh oh man, and other things about this is a good guy, this is Dan, this is my dad's high school best friend. And Katie and Kaylea, my sister's dad. I grew up with him. Great dude, but very Catholic. I just remember every once in a while it would come out, even though we never, you know, prayed, we never went to church or anything. Remember I liked the movie seven when it came out, and he was deeply upset that I liked that. He's like that is it

It was like, oh no, yeah, well I remember. And another song from Jesus to the musical it's called cult Terrific. It goes it's called terrific. You know what we mean. It's called terrific. Our heads are shafe clean, it's called terrific. A barrel of fun it's called terrific. And a cachet of guns.

Wait, Jesus comes back and starts he starts a cult, starts a new cult because he's unhappy with the current Catholic church.

Not enough guns, not enough guns. Yeah, yeah, right exactly, so I forget what the yeah something about him just starting a new new cult, and it got kind of violent and weird.

I think that's where the plot went.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, it came out.

In a lot of weird ways. Was the main antagonist a lot.

Of weird ways.

Because we also had a fake we had to make a fake band for a different school projects and we called ours Last Rites. It was just mostly kind of weird religious songs. The one I wrote was a song about burning the Bible. It's called the Bible burns Better. And that one was actually really catchy. I am still proud of the Bible burns better. The chorus was fire, fire down to every letter, and the dark of the night, the Bible burns better. It's your dark desire, be a

Yes, but Mike, I have to ask for those listening to the audio. Whenever Mike is singing this, he's looking off to the left.

When he's reading a Google duck.

Do you have a document of the script?

No, I don't know why. It's just a sweet you. No, I don't know why I'm looking to him. I actually I am, despite what you might think. I am actually just slightly embarrassed. And I can't look at you.

Why that's.

Shame.

There is little bit no audible.

No.

I could probably do the verses for Bible Birds better if I would.

Wait.

It's not a Christian rock band, but like, no, it's not.

I don't know if i'd call it.

I want to call it that either, but it's like it's, you know, somewhere in between a project.

We had to sing the one song called Heaven a Blake. We just went to Heaven and fought a bunch of angels. We performed that one in class and we got an A. Not in Catholic class, right, No, this was public high school. I switched after fourth grade. Oh God, I bet, yeah, I bet If it was Catholic high school, they would not have liked it.

That was the end of my singing career was Catholic school, because we had to do the Christmas program every year, and like, the main thing they teach you every time is don't lock your knees because you're gonna pass out and make us all look like idiots in a church. So that's all I thought about every year at the Christmas programs, like don't lock your fucking knees. But yeah, a lot of silent Night, a lot of this is the day that the Lord has made that.

Type of stuff.

And I remember mine first or second grade, and at the time, my dad was listening to a ton of Bob Dylan, and he always had me listening to a lot of Bob Dylan, and you know, doing impressions of Bob Dylan so to kind of like pop the classmates and stuff. I was doing a lot of net net and then the teacher made me stop. It was like, Dan, what are you doing? Like you're you're sounding like I'm doing a Bob Dylan impression, and she like I got

Bob Dylan, Like a bunch of yeah, seven year olds like Bob Dylan.

Is could just said it was what Tom Petty, who kind of sounds like Bob doing Anyways.

I don't even know seven year old.

No, that's still probably pretty of course.

Yeah, Mike, you uh, Janet Reno came up as she's want to do Remember when that was like the craziest political thing in the world, like on SNL, like the wackiest political figure you will retire.

You're promised, you promised that emo.

You were going to.

Talk about get my political agenda across that podcasts.

We are so pro Reno, Janet Reno. I want her to just run Reno Mania on this country once again. Look, I probably not I do.

Just think about the things that used to be big political controversies in the nineties. We got let's do old bow, Yeah, had a blow job in the nineties, like Obama wearing the tan suit like that was well, like the biggest things in the nineties that everybody in America was very concerned about was Bill Clinton's blow job, uh Ellen, degenerous, being gay in O. J.

Simpson.

Those were like the three things.

The holy trinity of the nineties.

Yeah, right, what was the thing? It wasn't water Gate, it wasn't water World. What was the Whitewater? Whitewater.

I was very young and I basically just got my politics through Mad Magazine, and Whitewater would come up all the time on Letterman and stuff, and it was like a land deal.

Yeah right.

As a kid, I was just like, this doesn't seem like anything. Uh So, yeah, I think it was probably one of those ones where they were just trying to trump it up because they were so always trying to go after When.

He said trump it up, what did you mean?

Yeah, I mean that one.

Shit, I think that's a different meaning.

Now have you ever seen the clip from like the two thousands where Norm McDonald is on the view and somehow one of the Clintons comes up and Norm out of nowhere. It's like, oh, yeah, you know the story about like when the Clinton's killed a guy right just in the daytime like joy Bay and be like oh, and Norm's like, no, no, he killed a guy.

Let it go.

I was thinking the other day, like it used to be like this thing and all, like the sitcoms and TV shows are just in general, like the biggest source of pride for parents as if their child became the president of the United States, And I'm like, oh, that's like the last thing I would want to like it just like even if you were a good president United States, you know how many deaths he would be responsible for technically your call, Like no, I feel.

Like the bar for good is way warped to like I like Obama a lot, but he's definitely killed the people.

Yeah, yeah, all sorts of people. And it's like that's what makes it disturbing because you look at Obamba, he's like he like likes thro lean into the memes and he has a bit of this like warm figure. He's like still killed so many people.

But that that thing what I think of is Marge wanting Bart to be a Supreme Court the Supreme Court justice, like and uh, and then he fails in her dream and then has to become like a Supreme Court justice themed a stripper.

I think he's got that like stubble and they do the great thing where it's like his spikes on his hair are kind of like.

Yeah, yeah, he's got the big beer belly like Homer.

It's very funny. Yeah, like curling pistols or something.

Yeah, got it.

Love being on this podcast with people that appreciate the fucking Simpsons, and Mary absolutely does. I'm talking directly about Mike Mahardy.

Well, we could probably we could just edit some wine into it and then probably get him on board.

Maybe you know what, we were sharing some stuff today. We we did find someone who was, as I put it, Mike Mahardy if he wasn't so.

Aware, Yeah, that's so fun. Thing turns out.

The self awareness is a critical critical Do you need that?

You do? I need important? Got where she had it.

I think Maharty was doing trying to do my voice two episodes ago on here and I want to do a Mike Maharty impression, but he has a pretty normal voice unfortunately, got a.

Very no he's got they always have like alien and trailer and uh it's a little bit of JFK issues affectations. Yeah, you got that East Coast fancy boy thing. Going on, Yeah, sure, it was very fair.

There's gotta be a Simpsons episode about wine, right, there's a zillion.

Episcourse they do go to aust Well, the astroliy one is just like the frog stuff and everything like.

The frog and there's the bit about you know beer, right.

Is there a lacrosse episode? I bet there's a lacrosse episode.

I mean at this point, I imagine anything we haven't seen happen between like seasons twelve and one hundred and sixteen, you know that no one has seen and I don't even know.

It gets really good again at one hundred and twelve.

I've been saying that.

You see that it got renewed for five more seasons like a main cast by like I'm the waiting morbid.

Of them dies.

Yeah, and then do you think they actually float the AI thing?

Yes?

Oh god, well did you.

See there's a clip? I don't know if there's the birds or who. But Frank Azaria. They brought him in and had him record a bunch of lines into like an AI thing as MO, and they had had the AI Mo read jokes back to Hanks Err and him kind of criticizing. I'm just being like, no, you can make it sound kind of like the boys, but like the timing and all the human stuff is what you absolutely can't do.

Yeah, oh gosh, I I hate so much that like I am, you know, getting her forty and I am becoming a everything's kind of getting worse as I get older person, because I know every every generation has done that for so long. Well boy, some things are getting worse.

Like everyone's like, okay, yeah, it's the broken clock situation. I think we happen to be right because like they they like, it's one generation she took all the wealth and kept it for themselves and it made everything else worse. And then what's the chargest rents for everything?

Let's try to be good old guys about this, okay, because I think it is kind of for all of us. And but I think, you know, I think when you talk about real world stuff and wealth and things like that, like there's some very legitimate stuff there, but I feel like so much the time, it's like, oh, a generation thinks Elvis is going to corrupt the mind.

Oh, it's gonna gat video games are gonna rot your brain.

And then the.

Stuff like you know, every white.

Dude from the Midwest over fifty five seeing like Kendrick Klamarr and be like, ah, this isn't music. You know.

That it always goes down right, It's always the kids are ruining the things I like, and it's like, well, that's not what's happening.

So can we parse out, like what is objectively bad about the kids and the times with the youths? Sure?

Yeah, I mean the AI suff's bad and less people like I will say this. I don't think the Minecraft movie or excuse me, a Minecraft movie, the a Minecraft movie.

Yeah, I don't think movie.

Let's call it a mincraft movie. I don't think a Minecraft movie is destroyed art as we know it.

I love that.

When I saw the Mario Brothers movie the nineties one, I told my dad in the parking lot that that was the best movie I've ever seen.

Like stupid fucking taste and stuff.

I'm sure that my objectively sucks, but I don't think it's a problem.

I think I said that about Double Dragon to my parents when me and Jason, my brother, were walking out, and made my whole family go see it when we were on vacation to see my brother who was in the army, and like one of the few hours he had to spend with us. We made him watch Double fucking Dragon in the theater and we're walking out be like that ruled in my family in pain.

When I saw Minecraft, because my nephew nieces let me go with them, I was just like, you know, my parents had to see the Power Ridgers movie. I'm sure they did not care about that.

That movie's pretty good though.

It wasn't bad though, got hitting the nuts at the end, right that do guy. He had that great light about missing the Monsters reunion or so that was, Yeah, that was pretty good. Actually, they probably.

Liked that well.

I feel like I did that video a while back with my dad and me at the fire talking about everything, and he was talking. We were talking about like worst movies they've seen, and my dad is like Shark Boy and Lava Girl. I remember I had to take the girls to that like when they were kids, and like, oh Shark But clearly this is a movie made for kids.

No, I think a big thing that has happened in the last uh well, I mean, your dad's not that home, but like the last twenty years is the generation gap has gotten a lot smaller, Like we just aren't shedding the things from our youth, and the stuff from our youth is like pretty similar to all the stuff the

I would assume that that's maybe not a common case. I'm sure a lot are just like you know, garbage kid tastes. They're like, you know, like Dylan Backlars, Oh well yeah, h Backlarer is interested.

In blueprints and zeld and stuff.

I look, and he's probably a market Yeah, he's probably all.

Right, Yeah, yeah, I think they're kind of like that, Jeff. We're like, they'll still you know, for us, like of course they have easy access to audible Disney stuff and they'll still watch that. I like it. But they absolutely want to watch their YouTube junk. And hey, I'm sure that that YouTube junk to me isn't too different than what early nick toms seemed like to my parents, right, Ren and simpy that probably.

Slime or like yeah nicktoons, or that you can't do that on television all that stuff, like what are yeah, what is this weird gross stuff?

Happy joy joy? Yeah right, like nonsense, Yeah, it seemed like it. Probably they they're probably were convinced, even though they may not have really cared, we watch it and let us watch it, they're probably convinced. This probably isn't good for them.

Right, I mean even like the you know, the the he Mans and the cartoon the cartoons that are just commercials. It's like, well, that is a lot of stuff that the kids have now, And I'm like, I don't feel like that stuff really damaged me in any real way, Like, yeah, having commercial shoved in your brain non stop, that there probably was something. But they have way less commercials in

That is one of my favorite weird Like, you know, my dad has a million weird old man things. What of him is He's like bitter that the kids today, millennials don't know commercials because he'll ask me like, oh, have you seen that State Farm commercial with them?

Be like, no, Dad, I haven't seen like, oh, that's right, dude, don't see commercials.

He's upset that they made Jake from State Farm black.

Is that what it is? You know? Yep, No, this is.

Very better that we're not all smoking cigarettes and watching commercials all the time.

But what is it about.

There was a shift between like our parents generation and our generation because you see, like like with our parents generation, I feel like, you know, they're not obsessing over like fucking Magilla Gorilla in twenty twenty five and there's not new you know, like Captain Kangaroo movies and stuff. I

Don't forget. In the nineties, like there was like the Brady Bunch movie, the Flintstones movie, the Adams Family movie. Like I and I think we actually are cresting Chris for a while, and when we were in our thirties, they were really catering to our nostalgia. A lot of that stuff came back, was remastered, had new sequels, even things like Beatles Juice recently. I do think that that's going to maybe start dying down where we're going to

Yeah, I think they're trying to I think that's actually the generation gap shrinking. I think they're finding more fruit from like video game adaptations because it hits us and kids right, and so they can like get more more juice from the squeeze there as opposed to you know that the millennials are the biggest generation in the United States that's ever seen, and that we were gonna have like once you know, that previous generation dies, a lot

Some of it is just like people have franchises and they guess they think they got to do something with it. When I saw the Minecraft movie. Excuse me a Minecraft movie?

A Minecraft movie.

Be a Minecraft movie. They had a trailer for a new Smurf movie and that already had got rebooted in the twenty elevens. They made like three of them. There's no one new new reboots and Rihanna is Smurf FETs and it's just a cartoon. Again. I'm like, who cares about the Smurfs? But here it is.

What what Zindia was Michi? What was that? That's her character in a movie? I think I just Zindia is me Chi?

That was? And there was a DreamWorks movie about like Yetti's or something. Right, it is something beyond the name of a character.

It's just the name of a character. It was okay, No, there was a guy that makes viral videos and he sang a song where he saw the sign. It's just like he thought it was a funny phrase, and so he sang a whole song about Zendaiah is me Chi and so yeah, that's that became a meme on its own.

I see, yeah, okay.

But the Spurfs.

Who cares?

How's that? But yeah, something's come back?

Like Garfield had a new movie. Why why we kiss about Car's original run. Was that the nineties or was that already an old thing then?

I think that was like an early eighties thing maybe, well, because that's weird.

It's like some of the shit that was actively on TV in my you, like in the late eighties early nineties, like Looney Tunes was always fucking off well, and it would be like Copyright nineteen sixty three.

Because we lived in the cable explosion, so there was suddenly a lot more airtime, airtime to fill, and syndication was the way they did. So that's why we had Nick at Night. That's why I grew up watching a ton of Flintstones and things like that. And I love Lucy right, So it is why.

I think it's why to the younger millennials we do sometimes seem older than we are because we are very well versed in happy days.

Yeah some days, Mary.

Tyler Moore, it was with Nick at Knight because like, I was obsessed with Nickelodeon, But when Nick Knight came on, I think in my head, I was like, this is old stuff, except for I watched The Witch because I had a crush on the Witch. Now, she's a very pretty lady. Yes, seven year old was like, something's going on here?

Yeah, she did that thing with her nose. Yeah. I like to the genie more than the Witch, I gotta be honest.

Well, I also did the Gilligan's Island for probably similar reasons.

Yeah, Tolkin's Island was great. Then they had all those TV movies where they had to recast Marianne or something because of drama. How many TV movies There's three, and the last one was Gilligan's Island meets the Harlem Globe Trotter. Is this the kind of thing wheref I search us on YouTube, I'll find like seven, like eight hour long

What you just think of film franchises that eventually got TV movie sequels?

Film?

Well, Mission impossible, Oh, I got what we're talking about. That was a TV franchise that got.

Well no, no, but I mean that started as a film franchise and then sort of dwindled to the point where like eventually they were like, let's make a sequel, but let's just put it on TV.

That the Child series, you're saying, just like a one off or something.

Yeah.

So, like there was like, you know, several Revenge of the Nerds movies that were released in theater, and the first one made a lot of money even though it's a terrible movie. And then Adventure They're like, well, we're still gonna keep making these, but we don't have a ton of money. Let's just put this one on TV and had a seven to eleven crossover. You can go to the gas station or to go to the convenience store and get three D glasses and they had like three D scenes or whatever.

Problem Child remember that those movies. There's Problem Child one, two, there was a Problem Child three. It was a TV original movie. I remember watching it when it came out because we loved the first two, especially the second one. We watched it all the time in my house. Yeah. The third one was just this sad directed TV thing. I wonder gosh, Kevan watched that.

Note it's got to be.

Somewhere it's directed direct to VHS, like, yeah, it's below that.

Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna into all my plex server.

That was a whole thing though, like the the big TV reunion thing, right, and it used to be a big deal.

Did say by the Bell and Friends and stuff? Recently? Yeah, it's a streaming thing.

Oh really, there's fat matter. The Facts of Life had a big one. Well now it's like they do a whole new show, right, it was like fool House. They just ate a whole other.

Show for TV.

Yeah, right, right, right. It used to be like the TV movie reunion thing instead.

Mean Girls Too aired on ABC Family in twenty eleven.

What is that?

That's weird?

The confidence to put the number on it and like Colon you know, the New Class or whatever.

You know, Yeah, I love.

Would video games do that? Like Tony Hawk's pro Skater fives on The Hedgehog four, it's.

Like you can never go back, you can, like we can we all act like Tony Hot five didn't happen, but like they couldn't, Like you could do a Super Mario Brothers four right now.

Yeah, it has like a downloadable.

No. I mean, let's be honest, they wouldn' they would charge a lot if they made it. Okay, let's say Nine did a Mega Man nine for Mario and they called it Super Mario Brothers four any s style? How much does Nintendo charge for that? Like for Shoot, I think they charged sixty.

Yeah, I'd pay eighty.

Are you joking.

Like you're not gonna play the new Maari? Yeah? Well Mega Man did such a good job with it because Mega nine is so good, and then I don't. Everyone's like, well, we'll do that too, but it'll be bad.

It was on on the xbo A stream I did where I played Sonic four episode four and ho Lee ship it is worse than I remembered.

It's terrible.

That was the most angry comments I ever got was Sonic the Hedgehog four episode two, when I you that and gave it a bad score. Of course, being Sonic fans are there just and look, I'm kind of among their numbers in some way, but they are very very interesting.

Did Sammy Sonic fan come after you?

Oh? Yeah? Yeah.

That was eye opening to me because like I grew up as a I love Sonic. I mean Sonic two is one of my favorite games of my childhood. You know, I kind of fell off after Adventure maybe, but I didn't realize how crazy the fandom was until I was a Game Informer and Tim Turry was absolutely our resident Sonic expert.

He like used to make his own ocs as a kid and stuff.

Oh oh yeah, fucking Sonic game throughout the Wei era and the three DS era and all this, like some decent ones and then some terrible ones if they weren't getting nines.

Oh Tim was hearing about it.

Oh yeah, every time I gotta meet Tim and Tim have so much in common and I haven't meta.

Like you guys.

Out of any friends I've met, you were probably the two that are the most like, have the most obvious common ground.

Because I love Sonic. I watched all those shows. The Archie comics were incredible for a while. I adored those. I was definitely sending in like bad not trace, but like eyed fan art to the comics, hoping that they would post it in there and stuff like that. That had a Sonic doll that I bought from best Buy on its opening day, Like oh ah, Sonic was a lot for me. And then I think Sonic Heroes was my breaking point. Like Sonic if Etcher one and two,

Just couldn't do it.

Game Cube, Xbox in PlayStation two.

Kayla liked that one a lot. Sonic Colors was like the DS three DS one right.

Well, we could send this when you play it on Blake Club.

Yeah, Colors is Colors was we and DS.

I believe, Oh okay that era, that's right, and it did have its defenders.

People like Colors.

Yeah.

People.

Although some the Sonic fans aren't happy with that remester that happened or was some issue. I don't know, but there's a ton I will say this for the Sonic fans they have the best fan game scene out there, Like, that's very good fan right.

It's kind of like the Star Trek to Star Wars, like Sonic to Mario, where it's like Sega kind of lets him go ham the way the Star Trek people do. They're like, no, we're not going to stop any of these fan films or fan TV shows or whatever. And that's always kind of nice to see. I prefer that to the way like Nintendo handles it, obviously, right, And.

We occasionally get a gym like Sonic Mania where it's like oh wow, and then they very quickly move off of that.

Yeah, like you've got Christian Whead right there, what are you doing? Yeah? And then Christian White had did that Pennies Big Breakaway game, which was like it's okay, okay, yeah, yeah, but god, I would kill for a Sonic Mania too.

And then they followed that up with what was it?

Sonic Sonic superstargf.

Right, and I don't think I played.

It after that.

I played it, and I beat it because I said I would. I would beat that game before I could play Super Mario Brothers Wonder and uh, it's it's rough. It's just like I like, I love I like Mania a lot someone who doesn't like a lot of Sonic games. Mania is so good, so much fun. And then they're like, well, we got it now, don't worry you guys, go do

It's kind of a nothing of a game. I barely remember anything from it.

Yeah, it's nothing. The kids don't even ever bring it up. They like they were playing with me for a little bit and they're like, Sonic Frontiers, that's real shit, but get this out of my fight.

Yeah.

I still kind of liked Frontiers. Didn't Aniers?

Fine, I like Frontiers. I hope that, like the next one is basically just that, but refined. I thought they had something going on there. Fact, like one of the things I didn't like about where those moments where they try to just put those boost style levels, like those kind of you know, Sonic Colors style levels, Like no, no, actually, the thing you got going with the open world, that's pretty good, and give me more of that.

Like weird puzzles and stuff in there.

Yeah, I think, just give little more refinement to like the look of the world and that.

Then yes, yeah it did have that like default unreal engine look and there's draw distance problems and things like that.

Yeah, whatever, Mike you mentioned sending in fan art and stuff like that, and it maybe I was thinking, like I have I ever saw it because I was the envelope art guy at Game Informer for years. Oh wow, And which that was that that seemed like it was gonna be a great deal at first, because I loved the envelopear growing up.

But oh boy, the amount.

Of shit you have to wade through, and every time you go through it, your hands are just a crime scene by the end, with like like paper cuts and just ink and pencil ship and it's just like and you'll maybe find one usable thing out of every hundred things you open, and it's just like, what if Mario was at c O and also smoked weed, you know, like, so that's.

The usable one ship all the time? Sounds good to me.

Master Kief, what if master chiefs weed? You know.

I was looking at the EGF Compenium the digital archives out and like literally was literally looking at the fan art, and it is it's all just that. It's like metal gear solid but Sonic the Hedgehog is Snake gets.

Just that street fight. Yeah, right.

Envelope art in some magazine is how I learned about Goku. That's the first time I ever saw Goku, and it was like, yeah, that's every issue would have like one or two Gokus and.

I'd be like, what the fuck is this?

Yeah? Yeah, I remember getting really upset at Envelope art on an e GM or something. When I was like it was a Nintendo piece, something you would do. I got very upset because I was a bit I was a bit more of a Sega fan back then, obviously, and it was like it was Mario and a giant Yoshi and he like stomped tails to death, right he saw his tail coming out of Yoshi's like foot and sonics like all scares like tales you see like the blood dripping out. And I was like, this is fucking bullshit.

I remember I was.

I was so pissed off about PlayStation coming out, and I told you, guys, I remember the like Yoshi's Island.

No crying, screaming.

That's what the guys should have bought new consoles they're doing, because like I just thought Superintendent would be all I need forever. So anyway, I went from being very pissed off at PlayStation coming out because I couldn't afford it, to playing at a blockbuster. I played Twist the Metal One at a blockbustered Kiosk and loved it so fucking much that I went home. And this is still in my mom's house somewhere up and looking for this notebook.

That's when that's when you became a man and you stopped playing child.

Yeah, I got an erection, and then I there was.

In third grade for our spelling quizzes, like like each kid had to kind of draw a picture and like design the paper for the spelling quiz that day. So just like had to put the six lines for the words. You can draw whatever you want. So people were drawing, you know, like Tommy Pickles or Mickey or all this stuff. And I drew the Sega Saturn logo on mine. Oh, I got into a fight my friend because he had like just played a PlayStation Kioski. Like Mike, it's so

I don't think I sent in any of my art, but at one point and stopping. If you've heard this, I don't know if I've ever told this on like Giant bum but like I was watching SmackDown back when it was on not cable. It was on like not you was upnor whatever, like the CWUPN or whatever it was on like network.

SmackDown was on up It was called the c W UPN then became seed.

Does I think there was UPN and WB network came together and became a CW.

Right back was on UPN with all the Star Trek shows.

I remember, yes, and Shasta McNasty of course, of course, so it was on. It was over the air, so you could get like news break ins and stuff like that from local news, and living in Kansas, we frequently got like tornado watches and tornado warnings and it was some like you know, there's some Stone Cold angle and I just love Stone Cold so much, and like they'd

I create. He hated the fucking weatherman for the channel.

It was like a s and everything, And I gave him an entrance and I did a match where I played as Stone Cold and I just grab a chair. It's like a no DQ match and I grab a chair and just it's like fifteen minutes of me whopoping this weatherman's as. I don't because I sent it to the fucking station.

Man.

He either thought that was really funny or incredibly disturbing.

I don't think I gave any context. I don't think I was, like with your Tornado watches.

Next time VHS unlathled, it's kind of a threat.

Oh that rules. Oh my god, that is such.

A good way to release just get mad at people.

I should just send them VHS tapes. No one would ever watch them.

Yeah, you would have to imagine it's like a nick Cage eight millimeter of snuff film or something. To the authorities here. Yeah, O Jesus Christ, all right.

Did you name it after the guy? So like at least if he did watch it would know it was him.

I was by the head went to Brian Busby, which you probably do. I think he's still the weatherman in Kansas City, but that wouldn't have been it because it was upn Weirdly related to that, though, is Jonathan Coachman.

Do you remember the coach Oh? Yeah, he was the.

Weatherman for KMBC nine news growing up, the ABC affiliate in Kansas City. So when he showed up in wrestling, I was very confused as to why my childhood weatherman was in wrestling, And many many years later I think I was at Wrestlmingia thirty Access their convention and Coach was there and I went up to him and go k NBC nine.

He just turned around, like what the fun is? Like the news like in Kansas City was like, yeah.

My Weatherman's like holy shit, no one's ever brought that up to me.

That's crazy.

I remember how weird it was because he was just doing Sports Center for a while and I like always had on kind of a hard time not just being like that's that's the guy vits Mcmahonpete on that one.

That's most people on most TV shows.

Yeah, And that was always my move with any celebrities, like always trying to like, Okay, what's the thing, Like there's the stuff they obviously get asked about all all the time, and then there's like the obscure stuff like you ever see that like Nard war guy. Yeah, like super super deep cut stuff. And that's why, like I tried that even like when I would meet wrestlers in more recent years where it's like first time I met Flair,

Didn't want to immediately mark out. I just ordered a drink.

I'm sitting there acting like I'm not there because it's Rick Flair next to me. And then I turned to him. I was like, oh, hey, Rick, I was going a little bit of small tuck stuff. He's looking at his phone with gigantic that I didn't know iPhones could have that big a font. I was like, hey, remember remember I think I actually worked at Game in Former at

Not like even interested that he like film commercials with a bear and doesn't remember.

He believed me. I think he was just like whatever kid.

Uh.

And then it wasn't until I just I just pivoted to like the Eye. I was like, oh, man, I've been watching some of those old eighties promos lately. And he like put his phone and I was like, oh, we were running in the eighties, brother, we were.

Going the eighties. Yeah you got We're.

Talking about like fucking Dusty Roads and Greg Valentine or whatever.

He perks up.

It's like, that's when people want to talk about the GameCube. We were running in the GameCube.

Ear guys, we were you brought up like winning the finance scure thing to talk about someone. Drew Scanlon was on uh last week on the FI Skip as you are Out, and I do I feel bad. I feel like a bit of a goof because the one time I ever interacted with him, I think it was on a stream and I was on a call and it was this you and him was the first time I ever was on anything with them, and I think somehow within a minute I brought up the Blinking Guy. I was like, why it's wrong with what? Why am I?

Also the thing you think about all the time with this, like don't be the Chris Barley Show.

I know, and it's like, I'm usually so good. I was like, Drew probably thinks of some kind of a due fit. The nice human being in the world, I know, incredibly nice.

He is sort of like, goddamn, yeah, he was awesome here he's flying planes now, yes, I mean more so than usual.

More so than usual.

I mean he's talking about it on the show. I'm not all the way through last episode yet, but he was talking about flying planes and.

So he stayed like he got like back on track with this, his lessons and all that stuff.

That's great.

Told me he was talking about like renting planes and stuff, so I assume he mused to be doing it, Like, yeah, he's he's the type of guy like I'm definitely older than Drew, but like working with him, I would just be like, ah, that's like an adult.

Yeah right, that's when I know exactly what you mean. That's alone who could figure out how to fly a plane?

Yeah, that's it. Well, I just realized that in this zoom call I misspelled my name, so.

That I am.

Makonchi.

Yeah, Mick, what Mike? So that's where I am.

Well, w's right next to the e Mike, it happens. It's difficult sometimes when you're in a hurri you know, you had.

To put an age on when you think.

I'm not going to say when you we've all continued to learn and grow as people. But like, ultimately where the line kind of evens out, what do you think the age is for you guys?

Like, oh, like, what age do I get to where I'm like, I'm still just that age?

Yeah, okay, I'm thinking fifteen.

Yeah, I'm like I remember Bruce Willis would say twenty seven and that's way too old.

No, No, I was yeah, no, no.

I've never really felt older than like maybe twenty two.

Yeah, I think like fifteen ish with when you sprinkle in the like, oh I can drink now and I'm married.

Yeah, that's right, that's an average. Right. There's some things where I feel fifteen. Sure, some things where I feel twenty six, Like I've rented a car once and that like yeah, and like that was like okay enough to be like okay, yeah, you know, but planning a family vacation to Disney that was like a whole thing and stuff handled a lot of that. But I'm like I contributed, did what I could and had some help there, like you know, I had connections and things like that that

It's very it's hard to say, like twenty three was big because that's when I like started actually going out and trying to be more social. So that was an important thing. So maybe after like twenty five, I don't know. There's always weird little things and there's so yeah, there's so many ways that I'm not that different from eight year old of my key here, right.

Okay, let's say this.

If you average out all the things you reference or think about, like, oh god, a day to day basis, I feel like I'm like ninety eight ninety nine, So I'm like.

It is, and it's it's totally like a bell curve too, right, because like as you get closer to today, there's fewer things from each year I'm probably thinking about. Yeah, I will say, if you say, Mike, think of a year, nineteen ninety eight is probably going.

To be the year I have. Yeah, that was a big one.

That was the year for whatever reason, and like, yeah, ninety eight, like just show me those numbers, and I feel good.

Yeah, yeah, I can think of a specific time, but like I mentioned this before, the weeks before Phantom Menace came out in ninety nine.

Sure, nineties, we're all a couple of years apart and stuff, But like I do feel like that late nineties was hitting for all of us.

Yep, absolutely good time.

In sixty four coming out, that was another time. Yeah, yeah, sixty four, Oh got dreamcast. I was so freaking excited for all of that.

Yeah.

But then do we all agree that that next generation was objectively better?

Yeah? It was probably the besttionaries, but you know it had that whole nine to eleven thing souring stuff.

Yeah, well, here it comes Mike you with his political agenda eleven.

Us from our video games.

Bad. Yeah.

I did change the tone of like even the fun stuff afterwards.

The tone of everything changed a bit.

Of course.

Earlier Mike you mentioned like wanting to hang up on your friend because he was like, you know, talking bad about the Saturn. I'm like, it wasn't directly because they were insulting the n sixty four, But I definitely eventually fought the kids who like, at first, I'm like, hey, I got the INN sixty four, come over, my house, Like we ride the bus home together and we played the N sixty four and they were like, this is amazing.

We didn't really have like a Saturn contingency. We definitely had PlayStation in sixty four back then, like there'ld be kids who owned them, but like nobody was like Saturned the winner.

You know. I was definitely very lonely on my Saturn, and you know, it died pretty early. But that was I never really like when the Dreaming Cast died, I was like, okay, game cubes were mitching my wagon. When the Saturn died, I would I played PlayStation. I played sixty four, but it really that was when I got into PC gaming, it was I was doing like Half Life one just happened. I was almost playing gryffin Dango and a lot of those old loog stars at Veture

It was still pretty interesting, arg you, maybe more interesting when it was weird. But yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, definitely. Uh, speaking of that, do you want to talk about video games?

Sure?

All right, video games?

Boy, it's just it's a delight, you know, it's uh a mic and grub of known you for a while now, and it's rare that we get to just sit down and talk about video games.

I know, it's never for once.

Yeah, yeah, I didn't talk about everything. Were playing, yeah yesterday. Which if you want to hear us three talk about video games on a many times a week basis, check us out over at giant bomb dot com. Subscribe to the giant BombCast we're over there. Definitely subscribe Blake Club. We'll touch on that in a moment here. But yeah, since people have probably heard us talk about people. Okay, I'm sure I've got a lot of people's around me right now.

I don't have a single PEOPO.

Look at the people.

Yeah, I kind of because I heard Mary is playing a lot of Blueprints. I have not heard her thoughts on it yet, and obviously she's not here this week, so I want to save a larger me and Mary Blueprinces.

Yeah, I want to hear that too, so definitely save some stuff for that.

Is Mahardy going to check it out?

I think he said he's going to check it out. Yes, I don't think he started yet. I know Mary has been playing.

I'm feel it curious because they were like, you know, I think the people really love this game, love it, But then there are some who some who I suspect would have I'm not surprised they don't like it.

But some them like, oh you don't like this? Okay, can I just tease a little bit for your guys show. I'm just I've seen her on been playing a lot. She's at ninety one point eight hours in Blue prius O.

I think she likes it all right, that's well. I think she also leaves stuff on for a long time.

So she definit left it on one night.

Yeah, you can say.

My thoughts are she probably likes it.

I feel like I've seen some people in Blue Sky be like, oh yeah you got married and do it a river. So well, I'll need to talk to her next week about it. If you want to hear us three and Jan talk about it, listen to the last two or three bomb casts. Probably yeah, And we put up videos plenty of us talking about Blueprints. It's an incredible game. We're all in camp pro Blueprints, very plow Blue Prince.

Just like only slightly annoyed that people think that's like, this is one of those things where like, oh, you just played a game early and you felt like, no, that's I'm forty two. That just doesn't happen anymore. I just God, I love this game.

It's like I like, I still am appreciative of that sometimes for sure, and like I can't be aware of it. But uh yeah, the point in life where that would have colored my opinion on a game is very long past. If ever, like come.

On, yeah, and I can't.

I can't get mad at the folks that are not it's not clicking with because I got no there's gonna make balders gates and stuff like that that are universe beloved, and I just like, look, not everyone's gonna like everything. You know, I'm not gonna take a personally if someone doesn't like a game I like, but exactly we all like it quite a bit here, I U, I guess, just to quickly touch on it, I think I'm done, uh in that I definitely saw credits a long time ago.

I am, But I I am feel myself kind of coming to an end as well. I uh, I think I have six of the eight bread letters now, kind of like finding Safe, I didn't even know we're there, which is surprising. I am still also discovering new things to like begin like oh, I could spend time investigating this as well that that early metapuzzle with the you know the letters or whatever, like oh, Okay, that did

Sure, I feel myself also slowing down. I did have like the first puzzle that I just straight up looked up and when I looked at it was like I wasn't gonna figure that out with it was the gallery, right, that's.

A glad I did that.

Yeah, yeah, I got that's one where I got the tiniest hint from Chris where he's like a thesaurus is what he said. And uh so when I got the first one, everything else clicked into place.

But it's like there is so stuff I would like to do and want to do, but it is I do sometimes eventually feel almost guilty, like I gotta play some other games and I can always come back to this, like I want to beat a Vout especially you know, there's rumors that that I believe in remake could come out next week, and I know if I start playing that might be hard to go back to a Vout something that's pretty similar. And there's some other games coming out soon, like you know clear obscure, I gotta I

Yeah, I think I could do the thing now where its just I just look up like the craziest puzzles and just watch it. Like I think I'm probably done playing it. But that's certainly not an indictment. That's like, oh gosh, long pass credits on that game. I got hours, like fifty sixty hours or something like that.

So and I think I've like at this point, have like seen more than either of you, and there's still so much more for.

Me to see.

So it's like, if you want to throw yourself in there, there's gonna be so so so much, but you can't have a satisfying experience without having to worry about doing all that. At the same time, I think it's I think it's good for a puzzle game like this, Yes, totally, Yes.

One of the best, uh, Mike, you are playing Tales of Grace's f What the fuck is that?

You know?

The Tales of Games, right, it's probably kind of similar to your favorite, The Ease.

Well, yeah, I'm a big eashead, but yeah, but uh yeah, so tail I've heard. Can I guess tales? How many Tales games are there? How many like different words are there at the end of tales that are part of the same series.

It's like fifteen or something like that.

Well, there's like a bunch of mobile ones that know, nobody really played. Let's say there's like twelve important ones, maybe mainline ones. There's one you have to know. I bet there's one that you know the name of.

Who makes them?

Damn co.

Tales of Simonia, that's right. Is that the one you thought I would know?

Yeah, because that was the big game cube one.

Okay, Tales of Arise.

Tales of a Arise. Yeah, that was the newest one.

I remember.

I already talked about it on here and I actually tried that out briefly. Tales of Simphonious, Tales of a Rise.

I'm trying to think of any other one.

Yeah, that's about all I got.

There's Tales of Destiny, Tales of the Sparea of Bursaria, Tales of Zilia, Tales of Zilia two, Tales of Fantasia was the first one, Tales.

Hid Zone.

I'm a big JRPG guy. The gimmick with these ones is that they lean a bit more in the action RPG thing, but they still have most of the trappings of traditional JEPYG and that you have like a battle field, like the way you kind of equip items, and the party set up and just the structure of everything. Great

Oh, it's a remake of a wee game.

So well, first they brought over the PlayStation is three and that's when it became Tales of Grace's F. And no, I do not know what the F stands for. But then this is now Tales of Grace's F remastered. Okay, so it's a remaster of a p S three version of a Wii game.

What is the through line with the TAILS series other than the tales word?

It's kind of yeah, it's that gameplay set up.

Really, it's like characters like a no, it's.

A final fancy thing. So I think some of them are tangentially related and like separated by eons, right, But generally it's like a fun fancy situation where most of them are completely different, separate things, but they have like always the same art style. Generally, it's some other weird quirks. There's this skit system where a certain point you can push select and you'll just see the characters kind of talking to each other about what's going on. It's completely optional,

Is this the one you were losing steam with a little bit a few weeks back again, Yeah, I almost.

Just dropped it, and I was like, I think I'm so close to the end that I will go ahead and finish shit. And I am glad that I did. But it was like it was a little bit of a push, like, all right, let me just get through this. Like I kind of knew how the combat worked. It wasn't really getting any more complicated. It has like a

It's your fault.

It's extra annoying in this when you're playing the kind of item menu game a lot at that time, like, oh, someone die, let's get them up with the potion, Let's get them up with the whatever. This game called Phoenix down Life bottles things like that. But again it was

The whole thing felt kind of small in some ways, in a nice intimate way for a game that took me like thirty five hours to beats, which I guess on the short end for a JRPG these days, but still felt like a pretty long game. There's actually even an epilogue I thing that I think they added in the PS three version, and I was like, I'm not playing, that's fine, I'll I'll go, I'll go read a description of what happens there.

I've had enough.

It's building a house at the end of Red Dead two. No, I wish it was that good.

I think it's like even for Sona three, which I love, has that episode I guess thing right that they added to the remake, and it was originally part of that fest version of the game. As much as I love Persona three, by the time I'm done playing that game for eighty hours, I'm like, oh, I'm good. I don't need to see the playable epilogue.

No, thank you.

Uh, Mike, you mentioned the you know, the we not having the right analog stick, you know, not to bring news into this show, Dan, But there was some headlines that went around this week because shoe Hey Yoshida, who formerly a PlayStation said Nintendo is losing their identity because the switch to is not weird, and I like, I just kind of fundamentally disagree with that because it's like Nintendo has done just follow up consoles in the past and that has not stopped them from being very Nintendo.

No, because my thought is, like the gimmick stuff, Like even the ones that were successful the Wii, the games I like from the Wii are not because of the gimmick, you know. I like there's a handful I like boom Block Galaxy. Yeah, boom Blocks is fine. Stuff like that, but like, you know, it's not about the gimmick. And then they tried to do the gimmick follow up to the Wii. Instead of doing the same thing, they did

I think that is just like an evolution of a console, you.

Know, and it's meeting a need. Yeah, it's not.

It's not oh, waggle controls, not so I can swing the tennis racket or I got a game pad.

It's oh I can take my game on the bus.

You know.

That's totally So.

It's people like, first off, conflating the innovations with gimmick because when I was kind of complaining about this, piss about this a bit, people are like, well, like, you know, some of the gimmis have been like D pads and things that they invent them Like okay, yeah, I'm not talking about that. You know, there is weird stuff with the switch to like the mouse, but what is always so much more important is just software innovation and creativity.

Was a plane.

Yeah right, well it.

Was like it's far more influential than any of the gimmicks.

Yeah right, And look at Donkey kunkin Nan. So look a what they're letting us do in that game, Like that's what's important. So there's a lot of things to criticize Nintendo about right now. I do kind of hate the Nintendo's not weird anymore thing. I don't, but I don't care about that at all.

You know, it wasn't weird the fucking Super Nintendo. Yeah, like exactly, that was that.

A problem for the Super the nes Like, no.

Wasn't weird weird either. This is kind of a relatively recent thing. It's a hold over from the Wi era. I think it was, you know, help them with weirdness.

It was their expression of like the Blue Ocean strategy of like, let's go someplace where everyone else is not. And really what they ended up realizing the reason it worked with the Wii is because it was less powerful, and so they saved a ton of money and so

Yep, yep.

And I guess, like, you know, you could argue that the DS and the three DS were gimmicky, but like again the game like they did some clever stuff with the dual screen stuff, but it did but.

Like probably top tier gimmick, and you know, hard to define gimmick, but that'shy would put that one in s here. There's always so much like kidro revisionist history people, a lot of people did it, like the three D I did, but they barely supported the three D effecting games.

By the end of the three D.

Launch, consoles didn't have the fucking three D on it, you know, Like it's telling though that like the best games you can still play without that, Like look, yeah, you're not going to see that block in the foreground in Mario three D Land, but like you can play through Mario three D Land, you know, yeah.

Yeah exactly.

I think there's Pokemon games that just straight up did. The later Pokemon games straight up did not have three D enabled at all. Cool.

Uh, Grub, you have mainly been playing the river Hillsoft game over Blood for the original station.

Yea, yeah, I beat this one today. Yeah, this this was our this is my Blake Club game. I uh, you know, four episodes. Last couple were not two long episodes either. We kind of had a rush last week and rush this week. So you know what, Dan, you were right? Not too bad?

Right, it's but also appropriate, like it's not too oh it's a bad game.

I just mean like relatively, it's not like Katana come on, like, you know, that's terrible and a gauntlet that never ended.

Yeah.

And for those that I guess you don't know Blake Club and just listen to fire Escape, it is US three and we play two completion the worst games of all time. We have turn I did Superman sixty four and Sonic O six Grubs Done, Dake Katana and Ride to Hell, Mike Mortal Combat Mythology three D, Mortal Come Mythologies, Fester's Quest, Mike just destroyed in one sitting, which was easy, one of the more impressive things I've ever seen.

I beat.

After that, He's faster now, yeah.

I am faster. Uh, Jeff. Here's my big question, because I've been kind of thinking about this almost all day.

What genre would you call over Oh my god, yeah, I mean I I would probably put it, especially if I was working in a magazine back in that day and I had to review it, I'd be like, this is basically an adventure game. It's an adventure horror.

It's barely survival horror.

Horny to call everything.

Well, okay, you're right, you're right. If I was actually working in a magazine back then, I probably would have called it survival horror. But so now I would call it adventures.

We joked at the beginning when you're playing, I'm like, oh, this is kind of just grimfin Dango down to the tank controls, and it basically was that. There was some combat, but ninety percent of the combat was in like the last ten minutes of.

Yeah to get into the combat, you had to still still go into the item inventory, that Grim Fandango item inventory and bring it up. And even when combats started, you had to do that and the combat wouldn't pause.

It what a weird take combat encounters. Yes, yeah, I had.

Resid Evil where you're like side stepping a bunch of stuff around. There's like two things in the game you have to do it.

I was shocked how much it wasn't Resident Evil, because I think they thought it was like Resident Evil, but it just really isn't.

Yep, it was. It's just a very strange game. It's you know, disorienting. You do expect it to be a little bit more like Resident Evil. Even like Resident Evil one back on the PlayStation had some like context sensitive button presses, right, Like you could walk up to a door and if you had an item, it would use it or did you have to go in your inventory and you.

If you had the key, Like if you had a key to a door, it would be like do you want to use the club key?

Yeah?

Right, And so this is like, you know, it's just like a level above that in terms of being a little obtuse, and so you do it. You have to kind of go through everything and just be like, okay, I try everything on everything, and then you know it does present as a survival whore and it's never scary, it's goofy. And then you know it's a sci fi story and it's a you know, a telegraph everything from a mile away.

It's you know, it's very much the Clones.

It's it's you know, one of those games from Gaming's three D infancy, where like they're just like, can we do even do this in a game? And it's like, well, you couldn't, but we will eventually figure this out.

It was a ton of fun to watch you play. I had one of the more fun Blake Club games to watch somebody play. It is a lot of that story. And the story is so cheesy and hokey and stupid, and the characters are so ridiculous and dumb. I don't mean like like, oh like this is this is dumb. I mean they have low IQ's, they are not very smart people. That whole aspect of it was incredible, or like, you know, there's that you got your little robot front Pepo,

Exactly that right that now, like knowing that, yeah, there's people right there for video watchers for like no knowing that this does have so much love for people who watch that super replay and like now I'm like very excited to go watch that myself. And uh like we're seeing the comments of people on that being like, oh, doing another rewatch of this? You know, it's Christmas time. I'm gonna sit down. I'm I'm gonna rewatch it all

I'm like, yeah, that is what this reminds me of.

You know, we have gotten into some real rotten games at this point. I think recognizing that there should be a space in Blake clip or stuff like Overblood is like crucial, right because like hokey goofy bad like b movie bad like no actual B movie bad is should be represented and so like it gave me a bunch of ideas likely what it is some games I want to recommend for the show going forward.

Please let me play Blue Stinger. I've been a good point.

I know it's your Oh well, Grub has now seen what you're gonna look like and he knows what the game is.

Grub, I'm jealous.

Have you do?

Are you familiar with the game, Grub?

I'm going to make myself familiar. I gotta find out what this thing's about. I gotta see look like I do know. That's why I'm jealous.

It's not a.

Particularly tough costume to wear, Mike, We've all worn way harder.

Yeah, we've all worn I've worn I'm the one who always has to put face pain on something like.

And I think that's a rule. Now you're the only one that ever will.

Yeah, fantastic? Was it? You think it was the best Blake Club game you've played? Yeah?

I mean, you know what, that's not how thinking about when I'm playing it, But it's like it's it was the least painful for sure. Like I definitely was like happy to be like playing that rather than Blues Brothers or some of these other games we thought wouldn't be as bad, and like, no, Blues Brothers actually is that bad. This one is that bad. Had all those weird defenders and they're wrong games. Yeah, they just don't. They played it literal different game than what I played.

Yes, it's funny, like in a weird way, Like over Blood is like really important to me in my career. And also like I don't know if Blake Club would exist in its current form if I had not pulled that out in like twenty ten, because it was the thing that taught me that like, and I've mentioned before like super Replay was originally supposed to be like we're in new full playthroughs of you know, first two were like Mario three and Link to the Past, and then like we just I pulled it out of the vault

But the running joke when we used.

To record super Replays to completion before we even started airing them, before we're doing a lot of stuff or anything, and I just made a running joke throughout where it's like, no one's gonna fucking watch this, this is such a bad game. And I started doing this like password system every episode, like, all right, if you've made it to episode three, the password is wienerless Steve. If you've made it to episode five, the password is insane in the

Yeah, because it brought that up to me.

Yeah, so it was just this huge thing.

And like, you know, Navarro came up with like the Blake Club name and stuff back when when he was a giant bomb. But when I started playing Sonic O six, you know, it wasn't I didn't have Blake Club in mind.

Blike Club is like probably the favorite, my favorite thing that I do right professionally.

Thing I look forward to every single week. It's the same. It's the thing I look at my calendar and I'm like, shit, we're gonna I got two weeks until the next time. I can't wait to, like Jesus costume, I can't.

Yeah, I do. I do for some reason. I think it's important also.

Weird like wise, Yeah, you know, we're learning things like we've talked before about like Superman Explore. Everyone just talked about the Rings and we showed everyone that like a lot more going on than that exactly.

Yeah, yeah, you know, it's like important, like I feel like for me personally, where it's like I my perspective on games has widened, like playing all these bad games, and I always liked playing bad games, but I would just do the thing where I'll I'll play the first level and I'm not going to actually beat this game. But being you know, we commit to beating the game

There was it was a part when I had to play that bad RoboCop game for the original Xbox so I just needed to rant and I was screaming about, like.

Look at this right now. This is a virtual world that was created with what is it? Zero's It's a miracle. It's a magic and I and I hate it.

I think about all the time that even these awful games are somehow miracles, and in some way they're almost more special because nobody cares about them.

Wait, I mean, like, yeah, go, how do they even get across the finish and we know how hard it is to make games. Of course, it was easier back than than it is today in a lot of ways. But still, you know, it took a village to get these things done. And you know what was it like working there? Like to get it across that finish line. It must have been like pulling teeth And somehow so many of these games actually did accomplish exactly that. Even the game Mike's Gonna play next? Are we just gonna

Watch one with Osama Bin lauded as the final pod.

I know I've got the beard, but I will not put my foot down undressing. Does that want to be clear?

Yeah? I want to be clear, Dad, I have zero interests and seeing you dress up as Osama did allotted. I'm not even going to do the obvious name. But I do think I was at a Halloween party one year in like the twenty tens, whereas like Dan, what.

What is that.

Mean?

They were about trying to figure it out? Right, I'll do it. I was at a Halloween party at a bar. It was like the costume contest. It was like, oh, we go, we got the Ghostbuster and the Joker.

Some guy dressed up as Osama Bin Wanden like he didn't go over very well.

It's real weird.

Although the number number three most sexy fictional character Osama bin laden right there behind Batman.

Oh going to it? Yeah, one god, I'm sure it's still like this.

I remember going to a comic con in like twenty ten and half the guys were Deadpool and half the girls were Harley Quinn.

Oh of course. Yeah, there's a big stever when you're in college. When Irwin just died, I never thought they were hilarious by doing the sting right thing.

And they have the sting ray sticking out of their heart or whatever, just like very cool.

They should have all stopped because nobody was gonna match Norms.

Steve Irwin, how you do that? That's how you do that, Dirk Joe.

It was like, I died so young. I think he died at a ripe bold age for a.

Crocodile was tragedy at the time.

Two days later.

We're just making please please don't make me laugh at this.

I'm not laugh Tragedy at the time is I don't know, maybe the funniest thing anyone's ever said I got.

I think about it every day.

He who can laugh?

Frank, you don't want to know.

God, that's what we joked about Overblood or like Blake Love being important, But it really is like we work for a corporation that has all sorts of ever changing ideas about how to make video games content, and I swear to God the thing I'm like, no, you were not fucking touching. This is Blake Club. We aired the finale today and I was not kidding. I was specifically

So it's a good way to go out.

I guess that's how it happens. The tune in next week on the game Best channel for bad.

Game Clubs, We'll club.

I don't care, just we even download the videos and upload.

I don't give a ship.

Yeah, glad, we're all liigned on that, Okay, for like hell, yes, yeah.

Mike, you played Castable Illusion while you were taking a ship?

I did, so, Yeah, I have received from Dan a Chinese handheld on my own. I know that you two love these things. Jeff gave me one to mess around with a little bit. Which one was that, Jeff that I just left at my house.

I think that was an early Ambernick one.

Maybe, yeah, the.

One that I had you play in the steam room grub you know what.

It might be. I think it might be, Yes, totally.

This is the Ambernick SP so it has that clamshell shape of the Game Boy Advance SP. One of the best handhelds ever and just the best form factor for one of these. The reason I asked Stan for this is because I knew he was like sort of preparing them and uh for for family members, and I was like, I'll buy one of these from you if you still have one. I'm doing this Disney World trip soon. And it's funny because I used to always love having my Game Boy Advance or my DS in my pocket because

Oh yeah, look at what the little game boy in your pocket said. I was like, yeah, of course, that's why I want them to. I imagine myself in a line at Cedar Point with my Game Boy Advance.

Sp like that.

It makes that feeling is I don't know something about it's magical.

I kind of go there real quick. I kind of go the opposite way.

Mike is such a like innocent uh, like you know, like I'll play it in the line for Pirates the Caribbean or whatever. I use mine a lot, But you know what, I think about a lot about like why I'm glad I have it.

On you Like the old game Boy Advance SPADs where they're like having sex or whatever and what.

No, it's because they say, if you ever witnessed something unbelievably traumatic, that you should start playing Tetris and it'll help their brain process it. So it's like I will think, like, oh, if I'm ever like a a mall and there's a mass shooting.

I could just play Tetris real quick.

There you go. What the hell?

I never heard this?

Wait, they say you should play Tetris.

That is a thing.

That's the thing awful that I have.

I've seen some fucked up stuff in real life that like, oh I wish I could have just been able to play Tetris after seeing that body that just fell off that.

Roof of New York City.

Okay, And then the next step of this is that's why you want to game Boy Advance with you.

That's a little bonus. Okay, angled corpse and the sidewalk. I could be like, I'll play a little Tetris, that too, all right?

Cool? So I bought it for for for Mickey's house.

That's not why.

I like the outside Chinese handheld for preparation of corpses.

For the impossible pivot.

I was excited you had this green one because that's the one my childhood one was. I was like, oh.

Yeah, I did. I did immediately. So you preloaded a lot of games on here already, which I appreciate. But I did immediately go and add Ridge Racer type on the.

Foot right, because the thing is it can do PlayStation stuff. But it's a little picky because it doesn't have an analog stick. So I think I just feel like something the night maybe and like twist.

Yeah, you put sim and I crushed Bandicoot one resume on one. But and I was aware of that. I'm like, well, I actually play Regester type four of a D pad. Yeah, that's I like to play it. So and I already played a race on it and it worked great, So great, that's good.

And I also but yeah, they also take up the most space too, so that's why it's like I loaded everything up so full sets of like any s and superintend Like.

Have you explained your process of like uh, you know, uh imprinting the cards and stuff like that, and like how you do this and buying all these and.

You've done it once and I've got the image saved to clone these SD cards. But I'm gonna have to redo it, I think because there are a couple of settings and they're weird things where it's like I don't know why super metroids down on it here or whatever. But I think the most important thing I did do it is when you get it just from the factory, it doesn't do the sp thing where it's like if you shut it, it goes into like about that.

Because it did do I was like, is it gonna do that? And then it did.

I'm like, oh good, I hacked.

It doesn't initially do that, but like if you installed it is this the one has like MoU os.

It's like muos or something.

You put that on there and you can go into some power settings and it loads you straight to like the emulator list and all that stuff. So it's like it's just a much cleaner, better interface than it comes with. And I just bought four more, so I'm gonna have to like do this again, so I might go in and try to refine like this first batch like that you got Mike that was in my first try, so I'll probably do it again.

But it's already pretty good.

The only other game I added right now is actually the uh is Mother three with the fan translation, because I finally played Earthbound relatively recently after years of not being able to get into it and freaking loved it, and people go off about Mother.

Three also and straight yeah, so I actually excited after this.

I have a couple questions related to that, but yeah, these things are awesome. I just love like you know, I was on a next Lander thing a couple of days ago and I was talking about these and Alex was like, oh, these things are probably really cheap and shitty, right, It's like, no, they're actually awesome.

Place.

They started off cheap and shitty, and then they the competition of like all these companies working against each other forced them to make it better.

And it's you know, it's it's awesome.

It's good screens, good USBC chargings. A lot of them will just come with the like tempered glass screen protector. There's a million great YouTube channels and videos of just like here's how to load this up in the right way.

And I mean it's it's all the manufacturing plants that make the expensive stuff as well. They're all made in China. So it's like this is like when like one of those products gets like deprecated or whatever, someone just comes along as they're like, well, let's makes what can we do with this place that makes a bunch of LCD screens, And someone has the bright idea like, well let's make

I'm I'm pretty excited that there's a bunch of Sega Master games on here, because as much I love Sega, I never really played much. Master System wasn't much of a thing in the US, and I watch a lot of retro gaming channels and a lot of them we'll talk about best Masters, syste some games. It's all these things I haven't played. There's a lot of Disney games on the Master System. There's two Mickey Mouse ones, there's two Donald Duck ones. They're all supposed to be good,

Yeah, And I've had people ask that, like, look, you know, I have an analog analog pocket and it's fantastic, and like, you know, I've had people ask, oh, and thats supposed to be the best one.

Why don't you just use that? And it's like, I don't know.

I like to play old games in any circumstance, not like people to take them on the go and stuff.

And for me, it's like different use cases.

Like the pocket is the one where it's like recently I've been playing through the Warrior Land games and stuff where it's like I'm gonna sit down, like while I'm sitting here at home watching raw in the background, I'm playing on the analog. But that is the more kind of high end expensive one. It's also a little bigger, a little heavier and stuff. So like something like this like the sp where the screen is not exposed, or I love the the trim Ui brick. That one's actually

It's so tiny. It's such a good form factor. The show is so good.

Yeah, and if something the worst case, which I've never had anything like this break, but like if it did, this isn't two hundred bucks like the right you know, you get these un sale for like fifty you know.

So yeah, it's a different use cases.

Yeah, I've never bought any of the ones that are like one hundred and fifty plus that can do like you know, maybe PS three games. And I know there's some people interested in that, but like, whenever I get to that point, I'm like steam Deck, I got my

Resistance exactly, pware. I'm playing Tetris during Master.

Tietiflood on the sand, I can wait until I'm home.

Yeah, there's so many eight bit and sixteen bit games that I'm interested in. We want, like want to play for the first time or replay. That's that's enough for.

They're the best one, or yeah you got twenty minutes until you're playing lands. Yeah, boot this up for a little bit, and I got a couple of Warrior where chunks, you know, and.

Then if you need something else you can Yeah, Tony Hawk.

Will work great. Yeah, Yeah, it's a They're They're fucking awesome.

I love my get a lot of use out of them, and even just the ritual of like getting a new one and like looking up the videos on the best way to like switch out the UI and load up all the games. Figure out like, okay, I've got this much, I got sixty four gigs. Here's what I'm gonna put on this one. You know, Like I.

Think these things are only going to become more prominent as I think consoles in general are going to become more and more of a hobbyist thing, right, sure, so it's good that we're all getting prepared for this reality.

Honestly, yes, all right, well I think the covers, Like like I said, we we're talking about the new games all the time. We want to check us out on Giant Bomb and also game mess decides last than in ten Dogs. That's a thank you for the podcast that Greba and I put out there.

Great stuff.

And uh, I want to ask you maybe this is a different angle here. I'm about to spend dozens of hours on planes, like in the next month, more than one overseas strip I've got pack, I've got a lot coming up, and I always, as someone who doesn't like flying, I like to make sure I'm like over prepared in terms of games. But there is that like choice paralysis thing, so I have I'm planning on bringing the first one. I'm going on is actually by the time this episode

That's gonna be good. Crash four never really played through that.

Crash four is great. I love Crash for it. I like it's my favorite Crash game. It's definitely the best one best Crash game. Okay, yes, no, it is. It is beyond good and evil. The twentieth anniversary Mike told me about that. I said it was really good.

It was, yeah, it's surprising good. I think that game falls off a little bit towards.

The end, so but still it's when that first hour is actually fantastic, you know, that's just what you play. It is magical, just thin, like, man, this was really good for you know. Of course the log games are good back then, but it almost feels like the first three sixty era game to meet in some ways. I wonder, oh, if you'll agree when you play it.

It's just it's a little bit XBLA. I played through it.

I just haven't played through since the XBLA version, and I think it's really neat.

We're all going to play the sequel here any minute now.

Right that next month, I think, yeah, I got a hat in Time, which h er let me. I'll solve an old giant bomb mystery that people have wondered at one point. You might have seen a coming soon or later this week, a quick look of hat and time, and then it mysteriously disappeared.

And there were some Reddit threads and NeoGAF things. What happened here?

I don't remember the deal, but I did prep a quick look for had in time, and I remember really liking it, and it was ready to go.

We recorded it.

I think I was a giant bumby at the time, maybe, And there was some sort of like internet drama, some socialmedia thing.

It was like what.

What's the name or something like what was his name? The guy that was on John Tron? John Tron, Yeah, he was. It was like about the creator. No, that was you're thinking, you're thinking of ukulele and the voice John Troun did a voice.

You're right, there was there was. There was a drama with a hat in time.

It was so like because we're kind of fighting against it because I was like, I don't think anyone knows about this, because like I hadn't heard about this, and I saw the guy popping up on other outlets and stuff, so it's like it wasn't the thing where like this guy was like roundly canceled. But I remember not really knowing what the deal was, and I was like, let's just put it up.

It's not like a John Tron.

Wasn't John Tron is also in a hatt and time is he?

Okay?

I think it was John Tron because John Tron said some white strim ship, because that I.

Would have understood.

This was something about like like creator like lightly docs someone like years. I can't remember his accidental or something, but I remember it was so kind of obscure that like I tried to look it up and I was struggling to figure out what the thing was. I remember being like, like, we whyt to just put this up. This isn't like some weird Nazi thing or something like that. But the call was made to like, let's not put it up.

So for anyone who I remember something, I remember something a with hat and time, and I was so excited about it, and then it happened and I'm like, I don't want to play it now. I remember feeling that way. I don't remember exactly the details.

I'm Chris, what you think, because like, I love three D platformers and I tried to place on switch and it just it ran very poorly on switch, so I just couldn't really stick with it. But if you think there's something special there, I definitely would try to play it some other way.

Okay, Yeah, I kind of want to go back here, because I actually never went back after that quickly was recorded, and I remember thinking like, oh, this is pretty fucking good.

So I'm in a three D platformer mood lately.

Right right, you started SpongeBob SquarePants Rehydrated.

I did that quick stream and it was good. I didn't keep going on it. I should have that downloaded. Like it's just like on a plan especially, it's good to just have some like turn your brain off type stuff like that. I've got some obvious ones here that I've played before that I know will be great. You got into the breach Across three D with the stylus on my phone say Across. Oh.

I don't know if you guys ever played pick Cross, but I've been playing. I played a ton of Pitcross. I beat the Danny.

You you know what's happening right Nowross on the switch online.

Yeah. After years of.

Not just me but primarily me being like, hey, Mike, Pitcross is awesome. Pickcross three D one of the best games ever, He's like, yeah, I don't get it. Then three D he has not done three three Okay, you gotta do that now. But like, yeah, why you would least see Pitcross now because that's.

He loves it.

Yeah. I mean, it was like, it's not some short thing to beat all the puzzles in the game Boy version. It was like fifteen hours of gameplay or something. It's the only thing I wanted to do.

There's a great Konami mobile game that has a bunch of of those, Well, I figure with that, like the Pixel.

Collection or something. Yeah, it's yeah Pixel.

They have that Japanese super Famicom one on Nisola. Tried playing that, but I thought, like others, won't be a game where the Japanese matters too much. But the very first thing I did was it was like a Japanese symbol was the Pitcross puzzle.

It's clearly supposed to mean something. I was like, okay, well maybe maybe not this one.

Well, I swear my try three D. It is the pinnacle of anyone really likes an enthusiast three D.

You're gonna it's gonna be It's if you like Pitcross at all, You're you're gonna be blown away.

But it's like, at first I was like, okay, I just guys, I just only now understood Pitcross.

I'm not ready.

And now I'm like I'm ready.

I'm ready.

I got this.

Obviously.

Slay the Spier is one of those games I started and I was like, this is awesome. I never kept going with it. Rogue Legacy two I never played past early access Mario Golf. I played a decent amount on the analog, and I want to finish. Oh do have chib Robo on here, but I think now I'm gonna wait for the switch to sure, yeah I should wait.

I'm the opposite because I have a copy of gb Robo for GameCube and I'm like, okay, I want to maybe actually finally play that before the switch too comes in.

Oh nice, I I so this is one here is Warrior or no, sorry not Warland, Earthbound and Mother three. So that's what I wanted to ask about, was so those those seem like they'd be good playing games, you know, And I was asking grub like, oh, would there be an analog thing or should I play on like Steam Deck? I think, like, probably good analog even even though earth Bound was.

From other three for sure, I've not I've tried earth Bound a couple of times and I got started. I was really into it one time, but I have not played past that. I know that there are some quirks of it being an older RPG that that might make that better if you can have some safe states, like you could.

Say that's just on Nso so I played it on switch and yeah, yeah, it's just on NFL.

If I'm bringing the switch though, I mean, I've got.

Right because like Earthbound is surprisingly more of an relatively old school jeripey than you might expect, so that you're going to do some things like grinding, and you might have times where, oh I died to a random battle, and do I really want to lose all that progress and go back to the safe thing, or do I just want to rewind a little bit before that?

It's kind of nice to have rewind.

Just make sure that the emulator set up with rewind, which.

You should not be against that to be clear. Yeah, that's why you want to do something that has rewind.

And you know, I think the reason I could see myself going through this game instead of finally playing through Final Fantasy six or something is because, like I think it might not so much be the j RPG menu stuff that I always thought.

I think I think the Fantasy stuff might be yeah.

Different, that's your if that's your hang up. Even like when I played through Earthbound just you know, a few months ago, I still think it's whole suburban weirdness kind of Twin Peaks thing is fantastic. The vibe and aesthetic of that game is still really freaking good.

Mark, I love them so good, Marion, Luigi and paper Mari and stuff. I fucking love those, and those are just turn based arbudies. I know they have the like timing stuff and everything, but like Free.

Has some time and stuff in it. That's what was one of the things I like about it so much.

Okay, So I do need to I need to get that from someone.

I may I may have sought you a message archiving site on the internet.

Oh cool, that's smart. Okay, Yes, I should play that. And the translation is good.

People who love the fan translation say it's amazing.

Yes, okay, some early big emotional moments and the best thing about Marther three is all like, remember it was gonna be like it was gonna be a sixty four.

GDA sixty four game.

Yeah, and all the images of it is a sixty four d D game where all these characters that had like looked really distinct, well, it's like they took those characters and just put them into the Game Boy Advance and they made them Game Boy Advance distinct. So they are all these really cool looking characters and they all like either like in the little village, and they're all kind of getting along and they all know each other.

Now Here, here's the big question.

If I know I want to do one of these, at least on the plane, can I just go to Mother three without knowing Earthbound?

It's it is, it is a it is a sequel in some way. It's not a ton so I think you can. The one thing I think you're going to bristle against him earth Bound even bother me a bit is the inventory management is kind of a nuisence. It's it's the Dragon questyle where each character has their own inventory and it's a max inventory, and it's relatively small, and there's a system in the game you can call your sister and she'll come and pick up items for you.

Mother Three's got a limited inventory. But you're basically you solve that just by feeling good about using items all the time.

Oh yeah, that's very part of my problem.

Yeah, I'm a really yeah, scene like Chris Redfield and Reside Evil one and just be like the eight is not nearly enough with Jill.

I've still never beaten resnievl one with Chris. I'm always like, look, I think Jill's a better character and she's got way more inventory space.

I'm just gonna play as her every time. I never plays Grace.

No. Yeah, it's some part of me like, maybe I should. I want to play that remake again. That remake is still so freaking good for Resident Evil.

Oh god, wellmake ther least favorite.

Sorry, you know, like now that you're so blue, Prince Pote, have you thought about checking out the mysterymake.

I didn't really realize they remade it, but I would not.

They remade that a bit ago, and then they remade Riven, the sequel to Miss Yet last year. People actually say that remakes great? Yeah, people raved about that.

Yeah, oh I have to do that on record Roulette. Oh wait, I don't think I have that anymore. Okay, maybe I'll just play it for myself.

Yes, yeah, we got our own Twitch channels whatever.

Yeah, we'll figure it out, I think.

Yeah.

Okay, well, then yes I will start at least one of those like Earthbound or Mother three on the plane. Last question before we take a break for emails, here is speaking on this plane stuff fellas. I Uh, this is a tough thing, and I want everyone to feel bad for me. But after going to the last twelve WrestleManias in person, I will not only not be attending this year's WrestleMania, but I will be on a plane

Now people go to Japan all the time, you're fine.

Yes, I'm going to Japan for fun.

Yeah, so all my several other friends are going to be there for fun also at the same time. And one of them, I was kind of dming, like, oh, yeah, what are you doing about Mania? What do you know about Mania? You're gonna be on a flight during that too, and yeah yeah, and he said like, well, we got to do like a watch party at the hotel when we get there. And I was like, oh, that does sound like a really interesting fun ways like watching WrestleMania.

Japanese foods and Japanese beer, sit down and watch WrestleMania. That sounds the hell of a night to me.

Yeah, rather than just saving it just for the sake of like killing time on a plane.

And you can always save it on the other side. Yeah, yeah, here's what I think.

I think that instead of this stupid pity party for yourself, you should think about me, who was kind of confident, like, oh, man, Dan's gone to every wrestleing forever, but it's gonna go to this one and I'll probably get to go with him this time. It's gonna be great. Oh he can't go. Oh yes, you go to Japan.

That's really boring thing that I'm gonna hate.

Mike, Yeah, very much.

Fun. We had it all in.

We went and we went to Summer Slam together.

We wish at least go to a wrestling show this year together with the figures of the Gether.

SummerSlam kicked the ass with us three Summer's so much for some stuff in the West again this year?

Right, aren't they doing a big show?

Was mrre sliam Is next year? Indianapolis got all this ship this year?

Where are they?

Like, right, that's between us?

So right? That's that was the thing too. It's like this wrestle is not even that far. It's like right in between us. It's not even that far away far the veggest right. Yeah. Restaurant bad, that's my bad, My bad. Royal rumble was part of me was like, oh we should go, and then it was just kind of busy and ship.

Got the Summer Slam and like Survivor sers or something.

I also haven't been to Vegas and forever. I kind of want to go to Vegas again.

And we'll come up with the excuse eventually.

Yeah, yeah, but yes, I would like to watch wrestling with you fellas again. But yeah, so maybe I should. Maybe I'm leaning towards washing it in Japan.

I would That's what I would do. That would be that makes much.

Get me get me a jacket from Riberta.

My hotel is an eight minute walk. I already have plans with somebodys to go to Roberta, so that's gonna be great.

We did that show with Samoa Joe and that was amazing. Yeah, and I kind of told my friends. I told my friends I was doing it, and they thought it was really neat. But I didn't end up like sending them the link because we did end up we ended up talking about my testicles a lot during it. I just I didn't know how they were going to react to that, Like.

Do they not listen to any of other stuff? Because I feel like your balls come up plenty.

Yeah, your balls are the main star on our shows. The one does listen to nineties Disney even though it's not that into it. But like a lot of my high school friends and stuff were not very big into video games, right, which is it's pretty weird. Like I always in my house was like, okay, I like video games way more than the other people I know in my life.

Even though other people seem to like the games. Fine, yeah right, so no, like you know, they're they're very supportive of me and things like that, but they don't have any interest in listening to we talked about video games.

Some of them do, but I most don't.

That's so interesting to me that, like, more than anyone I know, you are the guy that, like I feel, has no shame whatsoever, and like you'll get up and bolt out karaoke in front of everyone you don't care, Like it's I look, it's genuinely quality. I think it's fantastic about you. It's funny that Smoejoe talking about your balls is the thing that causes you. The two things Mojoe talking about your testicles and uh songs from your Jesus musicals.

Part of it. Like like like the one friend especially and he is one of my closest friends. But he also I had a lot of friends in like the advanced programs. They were like the smartest kids in the school and stuff like that. And his friend he teaches.

Classics now university and like he also loves wrestling. Right, it's not he's like super hoity toity, but I know he would be like a little off put and like that it's some like weird way he would like make fun of me for it. But I also I don't want to have that conversation of him try making me explain to him why it was actually okay that Samoa Joe talked about my testicles.

So funny that that actually just happened. Yeah, it's really weird for me. I think it's a normal thing.

Because it'll be in the history books.

Yeah. Think he just the kind of person like if I ever did meet him, he's gonna remember all of that.

We're just gonna lead with the grape swallowing because he definitely that made an impact on him.

Okay, guy swallows grapes whole swallows.

Look up boyemail dump truck with Samoa Joe. Fantastic fucking episode.

Man, I've got to do some fun things thanks to you two in recent years. I'll tell you what it's been better. It's funny. I like I've been doing this for a while. If there's some reasons, uh, like over on the games beats and I had to kind of

That's interesting thinking about the stuff before. Yeah, because like I guess, I was working for free from oh five until Game Informer hired me in O nine and I was going to E three but I'd like pay my own way out and all that shit, and like I wasn't getting paid directly. It was just so I had like four years of just no big crazy stuff and then Game Informer went crazy.

Right, Yeah, because like you got yeah, you got a gay four roads early. Jeff and I were low key at games Beat for a long time there.

Grub was like I mean, I knew Grubb's name and everything for so many years before, like we've talked about forwards, Like the first time I ever saw you in person was your on stage at that Greg Miller competition thing and me Mike and Mary, yeah, before fire Escape existed, Me, Mike and Mary were brutally hungover.

Yeah, and we came up and we sunglasses on and I'm like olasses because we were fucking unbelievably fucked up.

And then yeah, I remember seeing you there.

I remember just giving me a pat on the back because I was the first time I'd ever seen you in person. I had hair at the time, I remember, And we didn't. I don't think I saw you afterwards or whatever, because I think we got knocked out. Then we just went passed out of the hotel or something, and then it was years after that that we started working together. But like, yeah, I feel like we were following each other back in the probably like early twenty

And exactly just kind of talking on on Twitter and stuff like that.

For sure. Yeah. But the weird thing with me was that I never used to watch Giant Bomb. Actually Jeff was the one who liked it. It was Jeff was the one who was following it up and was excited.

To then Yeah, I needed it was like one up yours and then I needed something after one Up went away. So my Giant Bomb's pretty good. I'll go for that now.

Yeah, that's kind of how it went.

I'm so glad.

The first time I met Dan in person was in Disneyland.

I was telling them, that's right about the first time. Not only was it a Disneyland, but our first in person interaction was you giving me a stone cold stunner at Disney Yeah. Of course it's on video too. It was.

Right, There was no there.

I don't think I've ever immediately hit it off in terms of just joking around and like on and off content, Like it's like YouTube and like Tim Turry, yeah, Mike and Marry and like just rush more people that I'm like, Okay, I just want to make videos of these people forever.

This is the first thing we ever did was the you did that video game Jeopardy thing over on our our Patriot, right Jeff and ized and yeah, that you were on there, and it was the first time. That was when you The gimmick was you kept calling me every name but Mike. You pretended you were hot shotting me, and Mitch was.

The one you really liked for some reason, and everyone calls me Mitch, and I love it, and I've always loved it.

People finally stopped like that.

I want to be like, do you guys understand, Like the literal dollars he has put in my pocket because of this? Do you understand for me?

The crow hey brother got an idea.

Exactly like that? Got so over. That was such a what a gift you calling me Mitch? My god?

It was okay.

Plus, it's just more things that I could potentially rhyme. It's the stupid puns now, because Mic doesn't work, If Tocado doesn't work, I have Mitch.

Now. Have you got content ideas based around the Mitch name? Oh it's so good.

Yeah, all the things, surprisingly large amount of things rhyme with Mitch, not just bitch.

Wow, you aren't something new every day?

It's fantastic.

All right?

Well, uh, I guess uh that's it for the games this week? Should we Should we answer some emails?

Yeah? Sure, they're mostly drests the Mary and Mike.

Yeah, several of them are.

Oh I'm a Mic. I can answer those. I trik wine once.

All right, got a handful of emails here. Uh.

Some of these might have had Mike or Mary in mind, but you know, I got two fellows here that can play the roles if needed. So who wants to call DIBs on? I guess Mike Mike, and I'm Mary, okay, and we got married there? Okay, great, all right? They call it grubbing it all right, Here we go. First

I'm four games. I'm mediocre at I know Mike that to you.

Mike has put an embarrassing amount into Warframe, But do any of you have first hand experience, or people in your life that have been way too into a game that it became a problem take care of.

It's still from Finland.

It's I was actually just thinking about this because I a size from Warframe used to play a lot of kind of these forever live service games. I played a ton of World of Workout in my life. It's it's not something that's come up a ton recently. I was until pretty recently, I was doing a ton of Final Fantasy fourteen. I did play a lot of Overwatch too when I was younger, tons of Team Fortress Classic and early Counterstrike, lots of Heartstone, and that was the thing.

That a little bit.

I think part is because I'm doing so much more retro gaming now too. I'm streaming exactly and a lot of those games. If you're like not a specialist in those kind of games, oh nobody wants to watch you stream an MMO actually, and I kind of get it. I kind of get it. So yeah, I'm not doing as much of those, but I don't know. In our folly problem, I did have a friend who was really deep into world of warcraft, but he like he played

It's interesting because like when I first was hearing that you, you know, you would bring up Final Fantasy fourteen and wow and stuff like that. And I feel like most of the time when I know friends that well, I've said, I don't know anyone that plays Final Fantasy fourteen, but you know, like they don't do anything but that they don't play other games, they don't right social things or whatever.

You know, it's very important for me to like be well versed in a lot of games. Like I still feel bad sometimes like there's there's kind of a brand a Triple A game that I'm not playing as much of because I really am not as interested I used to be, and I feel like I kind of to force myself, like I didn't touch Assassin's Creed Shadows, and I'm like, god of my career, I should probably at least try Assassin's Creed Shadows Mike, I don't want to, but at least like the Blizzard stuff day before I

And over Watch.

That like that was my job almost covering Blizzard, and I kind of loved it for a bit. But that was a sort of unique time and place for.

That sort of thing, like sites dedicated to it.

Yeah, right exactly. And the thing is like those sites were always going to do better anyways, but it made some sense for us to do it. But even I from facy fourteen, as popular as it is, like, I'm like, how much coverage can I really get out of that anymore? These days? A bit when an expansion comes out, but otherwise not a ton.

Yeah, I think there's a you know the guys who do watch football all day on Sunday and they go and do it by themselves in their basement like that, that seems unhealthy to me. I don't think that's the best way to do that, and I think if you're

You're you're solid.

Like I've had the you know, I put a thousand, one thousand hours in like every call of duty, like from Modern Warfare on for quite some time. The you know, Modern Warfare was like I think two or two and a half thousand hours, something like that, Titan Fall, a thousand hours, all these games where it's like that's what I was playing. I was playing some other stuff, but I was just every night was playing that with my

I almost find it more satisfying to be like, Okay, instead of just playing this one kind of life service game for one hundred hours, let's do a series playthrough of some random franchise, right like back in when I was in college, that's really when I fell in love with Found Fantasy. I was like, I'm going to play through foun Fantasy one through ten. Let's just do that,

Yeah, it's funny because yeah, I always pride myself on kind of playing everything, and I usually say, like everything except for like not a big RPG or sports game guy. But then like if you're meeting someone who's maybe from outside games, yeah, what kind of games you play?

And I usually yeah, I play pretty much everything.

It's like, oh, I'm obsessed with you must play you must know everything about Escape from Tarkov and like, uh, it's like like they'll name like Valorant or Escape from TARKOVS or like a Hunt Showdown, these games that are like objectively huge.

But it's so weird that like not as much in like.

Our circles, right well, it's it is really weird like where we exist where like you know, granted Auto six is gonna happen LA this year and we're going to talk about it and whatnot, but the proportion that we talk about it isn't going to equal the proportion of

It's funny when I was back saying dynamite for the Smoe Joe thing. Oh, we went to the bar afterwards, and like, you know, I'm meeting a bunch of these guys for the first time, and like you know, like h no knows me and EXCaliber and stuff, but like you know, like Trent Burretta and stuff, and it's like I didn't know he was a big gamer, and so like all these guys are asking what are you playing right now?

What are you playing?

And I'm just like, you're heard of blue Prince who loves blue Prints now, like nobody had heard of it. And I'm like I act like this big gamer. And then like I mentioned this thing, is like what the fuck is that?

My one friend teases me still because somebody we were out somewhere and he told somebody what I did, and it's like, oh, well, you're playing right now, and I'm like, I'm playing Shima got me ten Side Person of five. This guy just looked at me like I play Candy Crush.

I'll never forget get into that physical therapist and uh in New York.

That was like bending my leg up and like trying to make small talk and ask him what I do and he's like it's a real talk.

What's what's better Halo or Mario.

Man?

Yeah, It's like we are so many degrees removed from that, but it does feel like does he have the earpieces? He being fed by chat GPT, Like what is a practical jokers?

What is this?

Yeah to the guy's question that he was asking about, like you know, getting way too into stuff. I do remember and like I don't. Maybe this was part of why I never wanted to get into MMOs or anything. But I had one of my best friends through junior high and high school. We were in all these classes together, talked about video games all the time. He was he was awesome. So like we're in the gifted program together. He's like super smart guy. He was in med school

Everything's fucking out. Like love this guy. Uh, And then like he got into Wow.

Because remember I went to college in two so you know, you can image a couple of years into college, Wow blows up and he went from playing everything. We played everything that came out together. He was a big and sixty four guy coming up and then and all he played like we used to go out and stuff all the time. And all of a sudden, no, we're not going out anymore. Oh we're not oh new games, the multiplayer games coming out, We're not meeting up to play

No, I mean I had another friend at that time. It was kind of a similar thing where he was he was playing so much Wow and keeping really weird hours, Like you'd go over there at like three pm and he'd be sleeping and stuff like that. No, I talk about like a body like an audio. At what point his parents took away the mouse to try to keep him for playing, so he learned how to play World Wars with just the keyboard. It was getting real weird. It's becoming it was.

Like haha, good luck, sucker.

At what point, like like what for it was over there because like the college Invester started and like this kid's bomb was like, oh are you ready for for college to start next week? And he's like, what are you talking about? I've been going to classes. Because he just lied to her. It's like like, oh, yeah, I'm going to college whatever. He's just playing World of Wark. Uh. He ended up, he turned out, Okay, he's fine out, he got married, he just had a kid a little bit ago. He recovered.

I think there's a lot of people who had a really rough like two thousand and five more.

Recently, Like I mean, that is why I'm terribly wary of stuff like mobia stuff or like E sports type stuff, or I'll never shi Brad Shoemaker tell me Doda, like, oh, the first you know thousand hours, you're not gonna have any other what you're doing.

It's like, what the fuck are you men talking about? Like that's insane.

I consider myself like somewhere down like I play a lot of video games, and I played a lot of this live service stuff. I played some pretty hardcore things. I played Dota two for a couple of matches, and I was like, fuck this, Like it's like immediately like the toxicity and like the fifteen subsystems you had to try to learn, and it was like forty five minute long matches where after two minutes you know you're gonna lose,

Oh jeez, it's a lot.

The game I probably played the most is Soul Calverer one on Dreamcast, and that was like five hundred hours.

I think, yeah, oh pro Fanacy fourteen its it's either a while or Final Fantasy fourteen, because it is, it is a lot. But again, like my friend like the wanted maybe a problem like pre early on really five, like not too long after that game came out, it was like, yeah, I have a year of gameplay time in that game. A year a year.

I It's weird though, because like I think, there is a part where that can seem like depressing, where it's like, oh, that much gameplay time, But then there's also like I also see it as a measurement of how much I

Kind of glad I gone on that train so early. I think one of the reasons I didn't play a ton of those Call of Duties I played a bit was because I did play a ton of Tea Fortress Classic in like nineteen ninety nine, right, like real early.

Shit, all right, next one is coming in from Tom from London. I fire skip Crew. I was listening to the conversation with Mary, Drew and Mike about flying and had a question. The older I get, the worst flying becomes. It wasn't so bad until a few years back. On an internal flight in Thailand, I experienced one of those

Yeah, it's funny because none of those three people or on this episode, but uh still, I know you're talking about. In fact, my last flight to Orlando just about a month ago, we were like landing, we were like it felt like five feet off the ground. We just started going back up right and and every it was like everyone's looking at each other like what's this about. And it takes them a while for the pilots that tell us that hey, there's just an up draft, we need

Like, you know, this doesn't work for everybody, but you know, you're what you your body's telling you stuff. That's what anxiety is, uh, And there's ways like you can improve that by having a healthier diet and stuff like that and makeing sure your gut biomes in place because a lot of anxiety comes from there. But whatever, you can't control that entirely, especially based on the American diets. But you know your body's talking to you. You can talk

You can as you're hearing, and then yes four than yeah that does.

That's gonna take you through it. That take you three minutes, for sure.

That's a good plane one for sure.

Yeah.

I you know, I've had anxiety. I've talked about a plenty for many, many years, and I'm still working on it. And like lately, you know, I've alluded to all this flying stuff and like I'm not suddenly magically cured. That's not how anxiety works. But like last year I had a huge run of travel that I was fucking terrified of. I remember I found out I was going to Games Calm, and I just remember, for like two months leading up

I had the same thing. I mean I used to take xanax and then eventually, like gosh, at first I was taking like xan x and dramamine to get through the fight. Then it's like, well, maybe I don't need to dream xanax, nmark and just do the drama mean, and like, now if I have to go on it cold, I can't. I like to take the dramming just because it makes me sleepy more than anything. Right, So it's like because I'm bored on the plane and I don't, you know, I'll just sleep.

But like, yeah, I even if.

You do the xanax, I don't think you're gonna be using xanax for the rest of your life. It is almost like a training wheels thing. Eventually you may not anymore if you do need this though whatever. That's what it's there for every flight.

Like no one's like, I mean, that's not badly, it's a problem if like you get home and you're taking it when it's just right.

Exactly or whatever.

But like yeah, just like you know, that's why you have to go through doctors and get prescriptions and things like that. You know, to be clear, don't go getting xanax off the black market or whatever.

But if and this applies to planes or anything you might be anxious about, and all of my learning about anxiety and everything, the thing that works for me most now and it's not.

It's not you know, I need to dannax.

You don't need now, call, don't need anything for this is just when you feel it coming up, when you feel the heart and the heart you know your your your hands get tangly, your feet get tingly, the breath gets rapid, and everything. I for so long tried to fight it where it's like, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm gonna distract myself. I'm going to do this breathing technique. I'm going to do this. I've done fucking everything you can imagine to try to distract myself or stop it.

Don't do that.

Just fucking realize that, Like, look, you've probably had anxiety before, you might have had panic attacks before. You've felt as bad as it gets, and you've been fine. And so what I do now is if I feel that, and I still feel that during taxing and take off like you described, Tom, and once I start feeling it, I

Nobody like it's not working. Just let it, let it do its thing completely.

And label it even be like just say that's what's happening.

Here's the brand, here's the heart, right, here's that thing.

Yeah, exactly, just call it out and like it all just puts in like a little bit of compartment for you and like, Okay, I see it happening. I can. I've handled worse what you said there, like, yeah, I've been through worse.

Yeah yeah, And like I'm not cured, certainly, I don't intend on or I don't think I ever will be, but like, I can do this stuff now and get through the discomfort, you know, because.

That's all it is.

It's discomfort and weird thoughts and anxiety isn't reality. You're gonna be fine. So yeah, so Tom, good luck with your future flights. I know how you're feeling, all right. Next up, we got Ben from Lexington, Kentucky. Says, Dan, can you please explain how you came to love Final

I'm so glad i'm here. Look, I love this show, Dan, but I hate it anytime Final Fantasy comes up, I swear to God. At one point I concocted this giant plan. Next time I'm on and we get to like, what, like, oh, what are you playing? I was gonna be like, oh, I'm playing this game called Final Fantasy one, and I was going to talk about that for a while and they're like, okay, Mike, what else? So I'm playing Final

I would have enjoyed it, just based on how much you would have been enjoying yourself.

Probably a world where I go through those because like, look, I like ten a lot, I like Tactics a lot.

I like these games in the past.

Yeah, it is interesting. I mean I believe you that, like a lot of way these games aren't your things. But you know, I was thinking like sometimes like like oh, I like, you know, really actiony games, right, but then you love something like Blueprints, And you know, I know that you know that you like a wide variety games. I think you like an even wider variety of games than you realize.

Sometimes that could be true.

Yeah, and it's like, look, I know I don't like talkie games and tactics can be talkie, but it's also deeply like I like thinky and strategic games, and this this email says like, oh, I didn't know you liked other tactics games.

Yeah, I like XKAM a lot. I love Into the Breach. I love like chess. As a kid, I had a Kasparov chess.

Machine that it was like you'd play against an ai and it was like, you know, this is the early nineties, so it was just like two lights to be like, okay, move the night to be four, and like I would just play chess against the fucking.

Net, you know, punishment. I'm making Mike play into the Breach so fucking hard.

I played it. Oh you did play it? Okay, I played it, and I liked it. I don't know why I didn't. I actually I don't know why I found it. That's what it was. I don't know why I didn't at least specific time.

Yes, exactly, Yeah, yeah, it's but honestly it's a very time and place thing because I it was O two and i'd just gotten the sp and I got a blue.

We're talking about techics advanced to be clearly right.

Yeah, Well but I did I wound up reviewing more of the Lions, the remake of the first one. But specifically, the reason I found out I loved Advance was because I it was my first semester of college, which means it was the only semester of college.

That I actually tried to go to class because I thought, oh, this is important. It's college.

And but all my classes were like these big you know, three hundred class auditorium three hundred person class auditoriums for like film classes and stuff like that. So it was very easy for me to sit in the back and just like, oh, it turns out I like portable gaming.

I got an SP.

That's right, you're anti portable gaming. It was I did.

The SP changed fucking everything for me because the GBA, I knew it had good games with the backline situation I didn't like.

So man, the SP I just gotten that.

I got Linked the Past and four Swords on that, and then I got like, I got great reviews Final Fantasy Taxics Advanced. All right, people rave about this game. I'll give it a shot. And I would just sit in the back of class for that entire semester, and I don't think I did headphones but I would just play it and like, yeah, I got through the talkie beginning. Probably didn't love it Everymber, like snowball fight or whatever, but that got me through that semester. It's like the

You know that'll last fifty minutes. You know.

I can kind of see the difference between that and a normal Final Fantasy. There's a lot of inconsequential battles in a normal JR like that, right, oh oh, in normal Jeopardies, I say, normal Jeopardizes, there's a lot of like, all right, you're gonna fight three wolves, and you are just kind of pushing x X attack attack, attack a lot. And for me, it's a flow state and it's relaxing and I enjoy it. I just kind of the progression

Yeah, and I feel like I'm like leveling up all these different things and everything versus like, yeah, you talk about Final Fantasy, And I tried several times because FF seven was such a thing that people like it was held on.

It's like it was like a middle year solid level of a pedestal back then, oh for sure.

And I tried several times to play it, and it was like as soon as the overworld opened up, you know, I remember, I think the farthest I got in that game was the Golden Saucer all the times I tried to play it, and because it would open up to that overworld at some point, and it's just like I remember every time it would we go into the fight, if god fucking damn it, I'm just gonna hit X and like I gotta wait for the load back out, and like I don't feel like I'm really playing, you know.

Even like just seeing the Tactics in magazines, I'd be like, yeah, that looks appealing. That just looks so much fun. I'm like, I imagine myself liking Final Fantasy Taxics, but where I ever played it, And then when I finally did, it's like, yeah, this super click. That's that is uh okay, we joke about Marvel Rivals. I did a red Light try to play some Final Fantasy Tactics and kept playing it for like ten seconds longer than I should have. And I

I'll just play some here and I'm like and.

I'm playing like Summer Zone and then it's like I stuck. I'm like I just got to finish this thing. And then I'm just like I'm like this is terrible. And I closed it and I like threw it so I couldn't even reach.

It, and damn, where are you with firearm blew?

I can't remember liked it a lot on GBA.

I might have reviewed some of those GBA games and then Battalion, like I don't know, I played all the battalion wars, the ones that don't really matter no one cares about.

Uh. The one that I really loved was Awakening, making the best one. That one's so fucking good. I played ship out of that game.

God, the actual like tactic parts of that and like the way that like certain characters you know, working off each other and everything, Like I love everything about it. Between that game it's so good, and the stuff in

But like the switch ones and everything.

I was okay with it in three Houses and then like engaged in it, but worse.

And engage just like run around and go do five things every time, and the tactics are so good and engaged though it's the best final, it's the best Fire Home has ever been in terms of gameplay, but just everything in between so much.

Everything is like the aesthetics worst, the characters are worst. That in between stuff is bullshit.

I wish I wish they would that would get a special edition, they would edit all that stuff Downrob, you got me thinking about this stuff when you were talking about that Advance Wars like this week on the BombCast, and it's like, man, I just want to play more fucking advanced wars, Like I bring my analog.

Maybe I'll just wind up playing blackmon Rising here. Yeah, there you go.

That Tiny Metal two is pretty good. That is a good one.

Oh I downloaded it, so it's an option while I'm out there. Okay, yeah, alrighty okay. This is a quiz for YouTube. Oh fun from Piston Hundai, who's frequent. He's got a lot of good trivia knowledge, and uh we got one here and it says, hey gang. A remaster for the also ran nineties mascot platformer Kroc Legend of the Gabbos came out recently, and while playing it, I learned it had far more success than you would think.

I was so with you. I love Mary. I got so mad at her listening to that.

I sometimes you guys have arguments on the show where people are like, no, you need to go listen to this. I never listened to the Links Awakening one because I couldn't hear listen to you guys talk about that. When I heard that, I'm like, I can't. I can't even listen to Mary talk this bullshit about Diablo being more important than Mario sixty four.

Why don't we real quickly me and you say that Link's Awakenings won the best games ever. Just everybody, no.

On the place you'll put that on the list. Yes, Mike and Dance.

Nostalgia might be clouding their judgment of the n sixty four's impact to a degree, regardless, And so I asked them which of these Nintendo sixty four classics sold more copies than a middle of the Road PS one game nobody under the age of twenty five has heard of.

So, okay, but this is Crocs weird.

But I have ten games here, and if you will tell me what sold more the game, I'm gonna say or Kroc Legend of the Gobbos. Okay, it's gonna be sixty four game versus Kroc for PlayStation one. Are you ready Yoshi's Story?

I think there's no way Yoshi Story sold more than Kroc. Yeats Kroc was supposed to be a Yoshi game, but that's like the very first original idea for it.

Anyways, Yep, the winner is Kroc. Yeah, Kirby sixty four.

Probably, yeah, no one, No one played Kirby sixty four.

I bet I woonderf Kirby sixty four sold better than Yoshi's Story. I don't know, I bet not. I bet not.

So your answer both Crock Kroc. The answer is Krock Okay, Perfect Dark.

Oh, it feels going. I definitely sold better than Kroc.

But I'll just say Perfect Dark because you know it should be it should it should have sold more. Let's say, I bet it's somehow still is Krock. But yeah, now for my own sanity, say perfect Dark. There are so many games on the play that there's like a handfl of games on the PlayStation that sold weirdly well, like that Frogger game, Like like, what are we talking about it?

Well, yeah, the answer is Crock.

Okay, it's gonna be Crock for all.

Yeah.

Star Wars Shadows of the Empire. Oh, that was a big game too. It's a launch game. It's like the one, like the other game you could well near launch, right, It's like one of the other games you could have got. Yeah, how the Star Wars, Yeah, it's still crack, but I'm gonna say it's probably still I think it's gonna.

Be Crock for all of them, but I'll say Star Wars the winner is Crock.

Yeah, Rock, Dinosaur Hunter, it's Crock.

Crock.

Pokemon Stadium too.

Two Mmmm. It's a late and in second in Town sixty four game. Yeah, I guess it's kind of like to really get the most out of that, you need already have gold and silver and like the link stuff. I'm gonna say, Crock.

It's Crock. Wit you have no mercy ship.

That's crazy, It's insane. It's cross saying that it's Crock.

Away is Kroc. Mario Tennis, that's fucking crah Man.

Mario Tennis is so good, but fucking Kroc.

Winner is Kroc. Mario Golf, It's come on the crock of the final question. Mario party, Oh, Mario party, It's a Mario party.

Yes, stick it in at the end.

I'm going to read this for Baidum. The winner is Mario Party. Yeah, just kidding it. Somehow fucking Crock again got.

So the places you fans do love to point this out. Uh, and then you have to ask them, well, how well did KROC to sell?

Well?

Exactly true, yes, but we have a bonus round and it could be a tie breaker.

I don't remember the score, but the bonus round is.

Kroc is reported to have sold over three million copies on the PS one alone. Of the three hundred and eighty eight games released for the Nintendo sixty four, how many of them passed this mark?

The closest there aren't that many.

N CC four is so like what they sold forty million five. I bet the only ones that sold better than it are Mario Offerin of Time, Gordon I, Mario Kart, and Smash Brothers One.

Maybe I'm at five. Yeah, five sounds good, but I gotta do more. Maybe maybe like some other rare game did well, I'm gonna say six.

The answer is thirteen thirteen. Okay, whether I win.

There you go.

That's closer wild the Crock Yeah, yeah, like PlayStation just has a handful of those anomalies and it's like, you know what it was. They wanted their Mario sixty four and they were desperate for it, so it's like they were looking for it in anything.

I mean, I was telling myself Crash was just as good as Mario, and then it was.

Yeah, and then just like the Crocks like that. But it's got like it's actually three D worlds and you run around and say, yeah, okay, have fun with that. Yeah, you have a good time of Crock piss some great stuff. Was fine Ques, Yeah, I like that. That's a good I mean, listen, we do that with Luigi's mansion, right, so medicine.

That's scary to play.

For you too.

That's my favorite, by the way.

That's a good all right.

Next up, Hello, I am a thirty three year old father of two. Love my family more than anything. Side effects include getting so little me time sometimes you get choice paralysis and do nothing instead. Let me tell you, wasting your free time when you often feel this way is quite regrettable. But what's not regrettable is using a few hours on a Saturday evening after a tough bedtime

Like I love that movie.

Yeah.

Yeah, everyone took out.

The tributes to vel Kilmer that uh uh Will Forte wrote and also I think on the Lonely Island podcast did the whole thing about it. I did not know that Will Forte and val Kilmer were roommates for months after mcgoverer.

That's you know, that most interesting man in the world. That dose he's used to do. Melchilmer is maybe in the running for that actual time.

I read his autobiography like last year, it's like he's like just incredible, like incredible life.

Yeah.

Oh yes, rest in peace, Vell all right, next up, hey, fire Escape. I had a friend this week, tell me my taste in movies is too obscure. He provided several examples, including The Big Lebowski. In no way, shape or form is that an obscure movie?

But to him it is.

Would my family know what the Big Lebowski is, would a random stranger on the street know it? It made me think about what obscure is. You all have what many would have considered obscure interests, and he gave Eames, wrestling, warhammer, et cetera. But within the realm of other people who engage in those hobbies, you may not go as deep as others do. My question for you is what hobby do you consider yourself to have the most surface level

Yeah, that's wild, because like, like you, you can't understand that. There's some people just look at Big Lebowski. You're like, that's some obscure thing. But if you are even sniffing the realm of being a sinophile, then the big Lebowski is like so common it's so.

Popular several decades. Right.

It's like it's like in that pulp fiction like own, or.

In a bar in Iceland a couple of years ago when there's a big Lebowski you bar in Iceland there's a big Lebowski festival.

Like my my bar has Big Labowski Day. They so mugs for it.

It's not yeah, come on, no, it clearly you're clearly right. But I mean I have had those friends who are like every paycheck like this is a long time ago. So this story is gonna sound out David. Every paycheck, I'm just gonna go. I'm gonna go to best Buy and I'm gonna buy a bunch of DVDs. He's like, oh, this guy must really like movie. And he's like, yeah, come in my room. And it's like, well that sure is every Police Academy movie and every Mike Myers.

Movie and man, no hate School for sure.

School for sure like like maybe two copies, and it's like anything else, It's like, no, literally nothing else other than here are like the corporate comedies. And like, again, I love these movies. I'm not like putting them down by calling them that, but it's like, here's the movies corporations have made for me. These are the movies I like. And that's as far as they think about it. And I've seen it, so I get how this happens.

Some people just have I don't want to say simple. We had a friend in my circle and we kind of like always laugh because the Hobbit movies came out right and we were like, man, tho zos are so bad and she couldn't understand why we thought they were bad, and she was like, all right, but they had the

I remember I was doing like a watch party on a Twitch night or something, and it was like after me and Kayla had been streaming something, so she was like on the call on discord basically, and the movie was Big Lebowski and I remember like we hit the thing and me and Caleb Pinner's playing the game and I'm about to start Big Lebowski and I'm like, Kyl's.

Like I'll stick around. It's like I don't know this is gonna be a Caleb movie. She was like, no, watch it.

And we watched like the first like forty minutes and like I'm cracking up the chat's loving it. Kayla is just like it's not even like registering how it's a comedy. Yeah, and it's like I think there's a certain but she's not a movie person at all. She's not like, I don't know, b Lebowski is like a comedy snob movie or a movie snob movie.

But like it's it's a if you are not into on its level, it's like, oh, you have to watch it three times before it becomes funny movie. Like for sure, I think I actually hated it the first time I saw especially because I think I didn't get it the first time. But I watched it as a teenager and it was like I needed a little bit more under my belt.

Plus my brother was one of those people who really liked even before I saw it, so I was just kind of like going in already thinking it was obnoxious. Then like when I saw it for the third time five years later, I'm like, this is pretty It's a pretty freaking good Yeah, pretty pretty fun. Well, it's it's a perfect script.

Yeah, it's so good, one of the most perfect. It's maybe the comedy that's aged the best ever.

Yes, in terms of like hobby, I am in the deepest weeds of it. Might be the Disney theme park stuff even more than video games.

But what's the most surface? So I I do keep music at a distance. I just uh, it's like I enjoy hearing music. I like listening to it, but like I, like I talked about with you the other day, Mike, I don't really try to learn the tracks names. I don't like I know the song when I hear it, and I'll try to find it. I'll bring it up every once in a while, but I'll be like searching for some random lyric to try to find it, and I, you know, don't even like know the names of the

I'm kind of similar with music a lot of other things. If I like it, I do kind of like get into it and I want to know, like how how is this may like I can't just drink Scotch. When I got into Scotch during the pandemic, I did want to learn about the different regions and why, why what makes p D scotch peatie? What is Pete? Like? What

It's funny how you can simultaneously feel like I'm both sides of like, you know, an expert or not about something, because like with movies, I know, it's a common joke where it's like, you know, I went to film school, but like I don't get symbolism and and I haven't seen this thing or whatever, but like I'm talking about like you know, Big Lebowski and stuff like that. Like I think a lot of people on the internet don't know enough normies because it's like I am they battle

But that like makes me think like, oh, wait, am I just like a fake movie fan or something?

But then you meet like normies and it's like, oh, you don't know who scor says he is or something, you know, like that type of thing. But like, there's all going to be different levels to that, and I think the end is always going to be super skewed, like super online people are always going to be like.

Oh, this guy doesn't know anything, and no, just go talk to your neighbors. You know they're gonna know.

Yeah, go go read them your letter box reviews, and I promise you they'll get their shotgun and ask you to leave.

Yeah.

They probably have their phones out during a movie.

Probably that's disgusting.

Oh right, oh yeah, service level? Did I say?

I'm trying to think like, because I feel like I only kind of go super deep on stuff where it's like, like the most he has got to be wrestling for me.

I mean, yeah, you got wrestling more than anything.

Especially now that I've like, you know, I have worked there and know people that are like I have to that has to be maybe more than video games because I don't know anything about like making video games.

But boys gave up a couple of guys putting match together, you know, right, exactly? No, for sure?

All right, final question of the evening. Hello, all, I'm about to be an asshole, but I need to ask, does Dan understand why the Hobbits are the.

Heroes of the Lord of the Rings?

Oh? God?

Like? The whole point is that it's the smallest, the physically least impressive, people who mostly love eating food and smoking weed and staying at home and minding their own business that are the only ones capable of saving the world. And maybe that message continues to have relevance in twenty twenty five. To put a very fine point on it, he gets that he himself is way closer to a Hobbit than he is to Vigo Mortenson. Yes, the Midwest is his shire. Okay, love you all, even though you

But I also don't think I'm like a strong, cool hero.

Okay, But like Dan, I would much rather see a movie starring you than like, I don't know mister Tuffy mc tough guy, whoever that would be these days. Right, Like you are an interesting character who would be out of his element and would have to rise above, kind of like John Cena, right, Like, that's what's interesting about it. And there's something more beautiful and inspiring about you facing incredible odds and kind of being inserted into this battle

Luke Skywalker does long to be a hero, but everything in his life has told him he can't be. His situation has made it impossible. So even when confronted with the possibility to be in a hero, Ben's like come with me, every like you got to come with me to Aldron and help me out looks like what, No,

Like Rocky would not be a good movie if Rocky actually was the number one contender.

A popular Rocky, Yes, it wouldn't be. Yeah, no, no.

They picked him because he had a fun nickname and he's a schlub and his life is depressing, right and he had like lost the Spider Rico and yeah.

Yes, yeah, yeah, he beat but he's beat. He beats Spider Rico. Now, come on, let's just be clear here about it.

He can't be as simple as the difference is Rocky seems real life and Lord of the Rings fantasy.

I think it is. I think I do think you have a hang up about fantasy, and I love I'm not sure what it is. I like that.

I like Thrones, Fine, I've read that whole first book.

Yeah, I don't know, like something for some reason you get past it. But there's something about this more and always I don't want to say sincere, but archetypal fantasy that does have its roots in Lord of the Rings that bristles against you and I don't know why.

And back of the day when I would hear led Zeppelin songs and I'd be like, these are the coolest dudes in the world, and be.

Like more Door Dor.

Led Zeppelin, famous dorks.

This must just be some deep seated ball record stuff.

Like everything is yeah, I have yeah, Like in my mind though, like it's like would I root for Al's Like, am I more excited about an AL Snow match or a Kenney Omega match? Well, yeah, I'm closer to AL Snow, but U N Mega is way cooler to watch.

You know, it's an economy because like right, like everyone's claims to like an underdog story, but you know, the number one basketball team in most states, it is not the team and that's in that state. It's the Los Angeles Lakers. It's like they're people like front runners too. So yeah, I think in a storytelling context, usually we like the underdog.

I love that.

Story leading and the rest of you thirty like the little Max story.

That's what that is. Yeah, who is Brian Danielsen remind you of perhaps a little bit, which is Little Mac. Yeah, he's a little hobbitist.

If you ask me that, Brian, he is the most hobbitish wrestler that's ever existed.

That beards, Hobbit score beards.

Actually not usually but besides for the beard thing, come on, it's kind of a short like he's like earthy and yeah, he's very earthy the hemp Belt.

There was something about the Hobbits because again I went into those movies. I can't say this enough. I went into them wanting to love them so bad. I got the first book, I thought it was gonna be the Star Wars of my generation.

I was so.

No.

No, whether you like it or not, it is the Star Wars of our generation.

Yeah.

I don't like it either, but the prequels certainly weren't.

Okay, So it's just something about the Hobbits themselves just seem to suck so aggressively.

Do you like not like a grarian.

What's like lifestyles like the farming cultural societies Valley. Yeah, like, I mean, like I think a lot of people they see like they're like, oh wow, these people are like of the earth and they have this kind of simple life and they find something they kind of for that.

I want to be an old, weird hippie just fucking smoking weed on a farm or something.

Times.

I want to live in the Shire, so goddamn it, I would get along with the Hobbits great, Yes, I agree.

I don't want them as the protagonist of my action movie.

Right, it's not like calling it an action movie again is missing the point, Dan, Not an action movie, not an action.

There's an action pitched to me? What makes the Lord of the Rings special? You have like four sentences, Max.

Yeah, that's rough because I like Lord of the Ring.

Do you like them?

Yes, but I don't like I wasn't in love with them, But I think when I rewatched the extended Edition quite a few years ago, now like these are really good, but like I'll like like Avacar more so that's what I am.

Yeah, there is good in the world and it wants to help you, But you still have the greatest power to inflict change on the world. And also the trees can move and attack things, and that's cool, you know, Like I think the message Okay, let me just go get real with the here.

I think the message is when you put it that way, like, yes, even the smallest, you know, little guy can can make big change in a.

Big, scary, evil world. Yeah, that works for sure.

I wonder if this is one of those things that were when we're talking about when my opinions were formed and calcified about the Lord of Ring was two thousand and two to what two thousand and seven? When did Return of the Game come out?

And three is just one year apart all three the bank? Yeah, just once.

Yeah, I mean I can't think of a span of time where I was a bigger asshole than those years.

Maybe it's probably part of because when you weren't playing an asshole, you were playing kiddie games, right.

Uh no, I'm not.

Playing my Ratchet Jack Kitty shit I played. Yeah, it's that, It's just that When was the last time you've seen them in the theaters?

Yeah?

I thought about once and was like fuck this, and I just every time it's come up since then, I've been like fuck those and I really like I am. I feel like I'm a totally different person than I will.

Yeah, yeah, probably be able to get something out of them now. And I don't think you're gonna love it, right.

And Natiers in Minnesota, maybe we'll have a fucking trilogy night listen.

They'll they'll be playing in a theater sometime against you. I would love to see.

Talking about being in the weeds. There's a part. There was a time where I was really really into it, like when the movies were coming out, Like I was reading The Simmer really.

Which I thought I wouldn't get the pictures of you dresses Peter Jackson.

Going that was that was like my that was a little that was kind of like that was me at my most in that era was the night we saw Return the King on opening day and we were all just up and I dressed as Peter Jackson.

I was kind of leading every.

Picture of you from like high school and stuff like it just I'm not kidding.

I look at that with deep respect. Yeah, yeah, he's got this pride. Yeah.

I finding a man with no reservations about who he is and knows what he loves and he doesn't care what the world things from and that is persistent to this day.

And I have deep respect for.

Oh my gosh, the rizzing It's funny. Is like Jeff in igh school, I wonder if you know, if we would have been friends. I don't think we would have been enemies or anything, but like, you know, his circles were seemed a little intense to what I was doing in high school.

Man, I would have much been I would have been much happier being friends with you than my friends.

I think me and Dan would have been a similar friend creep in.

I would have totally like done my dumb that you fight a fantasy, my magic, but like we would have.

Hung out all the time.

Oh yeah, he had a tummy friends like that. Uh yeah, Like look, I liked Star Trek a ton in high school. That's a ton of material for teasing. That was my favorite I've got I liked a lot of that INRD Ship.

God you, I really do think at this point, like maybe I guess I have never really considered it until now, but like maybe I should just watch those again.

Like I mean, you know, do what you want to do.

I think, you know, there's a cool dude sitting in the corner of a bar, like wearing a hood, smoking a pipe, and everyone's like, what is that gun? He's a cool dude, and and uh that is you know, he's going to be the hero throughout the three films eventually, even though everyone really doing the super hard work are the hobbits and they are the emotional core. There are plenty of cool dude things happening in that movie.

But I but I think I want to push myself beyond the zone of like, oh, cool dude, gilling guys, you know, yeah, do it for that, but like, yeah, maybe expand a little bit there.

I mean, I just view them all as Luke Skywalkers.

That's honestly. Rocky is the closest brought me to like something.

Yeahh god, that was so much fun. When CRE three came out, you did that Rocky wheel and I just was good. I hope they make another Rocky so we could do that again.

Well, my next thing is that we didn't talk about the movies. I downloaded for the flight to Japan. But how's your main how'd your Maine? How'd you make?

No epo? Have you heard of this?

Oh?

Yeah, the boxing anime?

Yeah, I remember I remember me and Gersmon does an anime panel at that anime con once and we were talking about anime and in the same type of conversations. Here where's like, here's why I never watched this blah blah blah. I liked Rocky, I like blah blah blah. And somebody in the crowd literally screamed, like how did.

You make no? EPO is literally Rocky and.

Like screamed it, and like people have recommended that forever.

And it's like, I as much like shit talk anime and stuff the few anime things I've seen.

That's pretty cool. So I downloaded. It's all on Netflix.

So I downloaded like so much EPO and was like, oh cool because you know what Kene Omega and Takeshta that had a recent match and awesome match and they dressed.

And like it was a homage to this, like oh wow, okay match. So it's like I should watch that.

Sports animes apparently are all very good. I've been meaning to watch that.

Yeah.

I like conventions.

We should do more. There's there's that Midwest Gaming Classic in Milwaukee. It happened, uh yeah April fifth, and I'm like it wasn't that. I thought that was fun.

Too many games in Philadelphia's apparently a pretty popular one. Look into that one.

Maybe I've always wanted to do the the Midwest gaming classical thing, but it's always like WrestleMania Weekend or whatever, and this year it wasn't.

But I was in New York, so it's yeah, sure, let's keep that on our radar.

I would love to do that. It's like retrosaurs and stuff. Yeah, alright, well, ship, that's a podcast.

God damn it.

I talked to you guys all the time every week, and uh, you never run out of talk about it was always a pleasure.

Yeap, yep, folks, if you're if you're just learning somehow of Jeff Grevin, Mike Manatti, let's just plug everything, fellas, please.

Yeah. What do we do, well, Jeff and I We do game mess the side. That's kind of our big weekly show where we catch up on the news. We always play a game of some sort, like the Mount Rushmore of of apes and video games or fun things like they do that one.

Yeah, yeah, George Washington of course.

Oh yeah, of course. And then we have a Nintendo focused podcast called Last of the nintend Dogs. We do that on Tuesdays. We have a Patreon for that stuff and it gives you some bonuses, like our show about Colombo, because we like that in the seventies Detective show a lot. That patreon is that patreon dot com slash gay mess. We are all on giant bombs you brought up. I also do a show with my brothers about Disney. I

If you have any.

Interest in that world, it's a very I love that world because even less so than wrestling, I felt like there's a big crossover of wrestling and video games. Right, Disney is kind of off in its own island. There's a bit of it, but it's I like how separate it is from the video game fandom.

Sometimes the podcast you guys do are excellent, And it took this long, but there's finally a video game podcast I like to listen to, and you two guys. I joined in while you guys are doing the live show on Tuesdays and Thursdays and excellent, excellent stuff.

Well, I really do love the show. I listened to this I look forward to it every two weeks.

I think it was like a couple weeks ago, like Mike's like, oh Mike listens, They're like, oh yeah, and I was in my car like, oh yeah, I do.

It's great.

It's great. So yeah, and it's always fun when we get to hop in here. But looking forward to hearing from Mike and Mary again soon.

Absolutely they we will all be on an episode the next time.

But in the meantime, check us out on Patreon that is firescape dot com, slash wait fires Oh yeah, Firescape dot com.

Usually Mike does this, so this is my first time.

Fire Escape dot Com or Patreon dot com slash fire Escape. You can join in as an ad free tier. For the audio video tier, we've been doing more video stuff and Mike and Vinnie from Next Lander have been doing a warhammer gimmick over there.

That's really fun.

Uh.

And you can also give us a smaller pledge amount as a tip jar if you'd like. It goes directly to the three of us.

Uh. Yeah, that's about it.

Check out fire Escape on socials, check out Mike and Grub on Blue Sky, Twitter, anything in particular.

Sky the says Tokoto I'm Tokoto everywhere. No, I'm not gonna tell you what that means.

Well, Joe he knows, Sojo does actually know. Joe is signing it like wrestle con Like, what's Tolkoto mean?

Did you hear about the penguin? Dan?

What's that?

Somebody? Uh so a listener like is working at a zoo or something and they're trying to you have to name a baby penguin, and he floated out Tolkoto and apparently people like it. So maybe a penguin's gonna mean named Tolkota.

As long as they don't know the context. I think that sounds like a great penguin name.

Yeah, yeah, And I'll tell you what. I'm gonna go visit this penguin.

If that happened, you are a picture with the Tolkota penguin.

My son.

The family name lives on, all right, Grubb.

And Mitch, thank you so much for next and thank You's a pleasure, and thanks everyone for listening.

Uh, we will see you all in a couple of weeks. Bye bye